XLIV. T. W. SEAVER. 



our river waters is fully appreciated. Two-sevenths of the 

 waste flow of the Murrumbidgee, said Sir Samuel McCaughey, 

 would irrigate 2 \ million acres of cereals, which in his 

 opinion would give a return of nearly £9,000,000. In the 

 County of Cumberland alone, if the water now allowed to 

 run to waste was fully utilized in growing fruit and vege- 

 tables, the amount of almost £700,000 now sent out of the 

 State for the purchase of these commodities would be saved. 



The most important matter in connection with storage 

 works is of course the run-off from the catchment area, or 

 rather, the amount of water that can be drawn from the 

 reservoir, which will of course, be equal to the inflow, less 

 the loss from soakage and evaporation. Roughly speaking, 

 we may assume that 20°/° of the rainfall will find its way 

 into the reservoir, and that the annual loss will be equal to 

 about 7 feet off its top surface. 



As an example of an extremely small run off, I may 

 mention that at the Junee Storage dam with an annual 

 rainfall of 27 inches, falling on a slate rock catchment of 

 1,500 acres, there seems to have been only 2 oo part delivered 

 into the storage reservoir. In fact the supply has proved 

 so bad, that I understand, a second reservoir is to be con- 

 structed. That this run off is abnormally small, will be 

 seen if we compare it with the following case : At Nagpur 

 in the Central provinces of India a tank catchment was 6J 

 square miles of low basalt hills, a fall of 2\ inches took 

 place in 80 minutes during one month of June, and no flow 

 took place, the total rainfall for that month was 6f inches, 

 of which what was considered to be the remarkably small 

 flow of -h part flowed off. 



In the Deccan district of India the rainfall being much 

 the same as Junee, and the nature of the catchment no 

 better, 114 observations of the run off into tanks were 

 made and the following results tabulated, on : — 



