144 OUR LAKES AND THEIR USES. 
and Mincio rivers. But for the lakes which receive and discharge 
them, these rivers would at times thunder down through the rocky 
gorges of the snow-capped Alps, and with their resistless torrents, 
sweeping away all human efforts to control them, would flood and 
devastate the whole intervening country to the borders of the 
Adriatic Sea, whilst at other seasons their streams would be so 
shallow and contracted that navigation and irrigation would be 
impracticable. Instead of contributing to the fertility of the rich 
plains of Lombardy, instead of promoting and sustaining the com- 
merce and principal industries of a dense population, these rivers, 
but for the lakes which control them, would be sources of drea 
and desolation. Having briefly touched on the important functions 
of lakes in different parts of the world, I will now procced with 
a description of a few important lakes in this country, followed by 
certain suggestions for the application of their waters to the 
advantage of the State. As an appendix to this paper, I have 
prepared a summary of descriptive data of the principal lakes of 
the Colony, as far as the limited reliable information at command 
permitted. On examining this, it will at once be obvious, that 
nature who has dealt so bountifully in other countries in her pro- 
visions for the storage and gradual distribution of large sheets of 
water has been singularly niggardly respecting this country, for 
even our largest lakes have been known to dry up completely after 
protracted droughts. As if, however, to compensate somewhat for 
such neglect, she has, in the features of the upper part of our valleys 
provided sites for the formation of large artificial lakes well adapted 
for the impounding of deep and capacious sheets of water. For 
instance, just below the junction of the Indi and Hume rivers, 
which forms the head of the Murray, a dam, 80 feet high, thrown 
across the valley, would impound a reservoir equal to some of the 
Italian lakes in area. Such a lake would receive all the snow and 
storm waters of a mountain water-shed of about 1,100 square miles, 
i s 
