86 Conservation Reader 



by carrying it in pipes or ditches to those regions where it 

 is needed. We can get rid of too much water by draining 

 the swamps, and building dikes to protect lowlands from 

 river floods. 



Let us now learn something of the different uses of water. 

 Every one of our homes has its water supply. In the city 

 the water comes through pipes from some distant reservoir. 

 In the country the homes are so far apart that it is difficult 

 to supply them in this way. The water in the streams is 

 often not suitable for drinking, and if there are no springs 

 near by it has to be obtained by some other means. Nearly 

 everywhere in the earth under our feet water can be found 

 by digging or boring a well. Sometimes we have to go 

 only a few feet, at other times many hundreds of feet. 

 This water in the earth, or ground water, is of very great 

 importance. It enables us to build our homes where we 

 wish. Spring water is that which finds its way to the sur- 

 face through some tiny crack or fissure in the rocks. How 

 delicious is the pure, cold water that comes out of the shady 

 hollow in the hills ! You can form in your minds a picture 

 of the rain falling on some distant mountain, of its soaking 

 into the groimd and finally reaching the Httle crevices in 

 the rocks. Along these crevices it may have crept for days 

 and perhaps years until at last it found an outlet in some 

 spring. 



The great river flows by so quietly that we often forget 

 in how many ways it is serving us. It serves not only those 

 upon its banks but those who live hundreds of miles away 

 and who, perhaps, have never seen it. It was the first 

 and easiest means of travel used by our forefathers before 

 there were any roads or railroads through the wilderness. 



