3© Conservation Reader 



there is not water enough for the needs of a great city. 

 There has now been completed a great aqueduct which 

 brings a river of water through deserts and mountains 

 from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over two hundred 

 miles away. There is now sufficient water for hundreds 

 of thousands of people. 



When it rains too much, many rivers rise and overflow 

 their banks. The farmer's crops are destroyed, his cattle 

 drowned, and his buildings washed away. We can lessen 

 the danger from these floods, which are very bad in such 

 river basins as those of the Ohio and Mississippi, by build- 

 ing reservoirs in the highlands where the rivers take their 

 start. If when summer comes these rivers are too shallow 

 for safe navigation, the reservoirs can be opened and the 

 streams supphed with this stored water. 



The lack of trees upon the prairies was once a serious 

 matter for the settler. We must not think, however, that 

 because Nature placed no trees on the prairies that trees 

 wiU not grow there. She may not have had handy the seed 

 of the kind suitable for such dry lands. Our government 

 has found in the dry regions of other countries trees that 

 will grow upon our prairies. In their own home these trees 

 had become used to a dry climate Hke that of our prairies. 



Steep canons and cliffs of rock once kept people, living 

 on the opposite sides of mountain ranges, from becoming 

 acquainted with one another. Our ancestors were afraid 

 to venture out on the boundless oceans with their small, frail 

 boats. Because of this the continent that we live on long 

 remained unknown. Those who first found it, the ancestors 

 of the present Indians, came here by accident. Storms 

 probably blew their boats across the North Pacific Ocean, 



