309 
On the importance of a Comprehensive Scheme of 
Water Storage and Canalization for the future 
welfare of this Colony. 
By F. B. Gipps, O.E. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N.S.W., 7 December, 1881.] 
Whey first the subject of a comprehensive scheme of hydrostatic 
and hydraulic engineering for this Colony suggested itself to me, 
I proposed to describe the physical, geological; and meteoro- 
logical features of the country, and to design therefrom an 
elaborate scheme of water storage and canalisation. As however 
r system. 
Sooner, however, than allow such an obstacle to deter me altogether 
_my purpose, I determined to initiate it under the above 
7 mig = 
Members of this Society but of all those who are patriotically 
s | in the welfare of their adopted country, whereby I 
Sal ie reliable data on which to found a safe base of opera- 
ns. , 
: * viiaia but whose very sites are now only known to us through 
eases of history, or by the desolate grandeur of their ruins. 
- Jumerous remains of huge tanks, dams, canals, aqueducts, 
Pe at and pumps, in Egypt, Assyria, Mesopotamia, India, Ceylon, 
Derfae =? and Italy, prove that the ancients had a more 
& a. fnowledge of hydraulic science than most people are 
as ent and admiration of the ancient historian as well 
le modern traveller. I am partially warranted in this 
“lon by the fact that the Egyptians ran canals through 
"Marries, by which when filled by the inundations of the 
