DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 331 
be in endless conflict. In view of the large financial interests in water- Mr. Le Conte. 
power and irrigation, it is not difficult to see the final outcome of this 
conflict. 
The big artificial reservoirs at the head-waters of the Mississippi 
are a great object lesson. They occupy ideal sites for storage reser- 
voirs, and such sites are extremely hard to find. 
The author mentions the fact that in times of heavy rainfall it 
sometimes happens that reservoirs will be compelled to discharge a 
greater quantity of water than would flow from the lakes in their 
natural state, that is, they would operate to increase the floods. Here 
again is evidence showing the conflict with power development, where 
the storage room is divided between several years instead of being 
confined to two years, as called for by the natural development. This 
conflict always arises, and it cannot be prevented. Necessity calls for 
it, and necessity knows no law. 
The grand scheme of storage reservoirs proposed for the Ohio 
River system is altogether too Utopian, and is utterly impracticable as 
applied to the control of great river floods. Let water-power develop- 
ment and irrigation each stand on its own bottom, which both are 
amply able todo. The irreconcilable conflict between irrigation and low- 
water navigation in great rivers is rapidly approaching and will 
not down. 
The writer’s sympathies are largely on the side of irrigation, simply 
because the public benefits derived therefrom are so much greater than 
the damages sustained by a few months’ interruption of low-water 
navigation, which, in many rivers, does not amount to very much. 
In the arid regions, where irrigation is the very life-blood of the 
entire community, it would be equivalent to public suicide to insist 
upon the rights of low-water navigation; the exigencies of the case 
forbid it. Here, it is well to call attention to a fact, not generally 
known, in reference to low-water navigation on the Ganges River in 
India. The head-works are located at Hurdwar, where the river leaves 
the foot-hills. The fall of the river at this site is from 10 to 12 ft. per 
mile. Below the dams the river bed is dry, the entire low-water flow 
being taken for irrigation. Going down stream, however, the irrigation 
seepage waters, together with underground flowage, increase enor- 
mously, and on reaching a point 40 or 50 miles below the dam the 
river is as wide and deep as it was before the head-works dam at 
Hurdwar was built. Later, in 1878, the engineers built a regular weir 
dam, with locks for slack-water navigation, lower down the river at 
Narora—4 miles below the railroad bridge at Rajghat. This dam also 
takes all the low-water flow of ‘the Ganges at this site, and necessarily 
leaves the river bed dry for a few miles; and then.it is as wide and deep 
as ever. When one considers the enormous public benefits derived, 
viz., 1600 000 acres irrigated on the Main Ganges Canal, and 1 900 000 
