THE CONSERVATION OF WATER.

BY D. G. ARNOLD, PONTIAC.

Modern science has demonstrated the doctrine of the conservation of energy, which may, and probably does explain many of the heretofore mysterious operations of nature's forces. The actual worth of the discoveries made by science will be measured by their relative value in promoting the general welfare of the human race. The fact that many of our most dangerous diseases are caused by microscopic living germs in the human organisms, and that those germs can be destroyed and the disease thereby eradicated, is of infinitely more value to us than to know that the sun is a vast mass of conserved energy or force which in time will be expended, with, the natural sequences, a dead world and chaos generally.

Now, in treating the subject of the conservation of water, I make no claim to the discovery of any new force, or of the heretofore unknown operation of any known force now existing; but shall endeavor in a general way to briefly speak of water as nature's great factor in the universe and also of the results accruing to mankind, who through ignorance or thoughtlessness, ignore nature's methods. And I further hope to show in this paper that in some localities at least, it is possible that water may be so conserved that a drouth, often amounting now to almost a national calamity with the accompanying horror of fire, may become as a thing of the past. As the blood that courses our veins is the great solvent (and our blood is 90 per cent water), holding in solution the nutritious elements that sustain life, so is water the life blood of our universal mother earth. A plant or flower cannot thrive until its food has been properly prepared; or, more plainly speaking, until the soil, its food, has been rendered possible for assimilation by being dissolved in nature's universal solvent, water.

Man in his struggle for existence is fast denuding the earth of her protecting robes, and those giant sentinels of the forest who with outstreched arms and sheltering leaves for untold ages have guarded and conserved the moisture that formed the life blood that coursed their veins, fall before the ax of the sturdy pioneer, and the deadly fire completes the work of their extermination. The rising sun is greeted not as heretofore by feathered songsters in their green leafed bowers; but in their stead lies a charred and blackened waste. His fierce and ardent rays, which hitherto had quickened the life blood of every tree, shrub, and flower, are now thrown direct upon the unprotected bosom of mother earth. Nature's law must be obeyed, and evaporation, swift and sudden, takes place. The life blood is hurriedly withdrawn, and, ascending, is caught by the winds of heaven and hastened away from the scene of nature's desolation possibly to be condensed as a flood by some high mountain hundreds or even thousands of miles from its point of departure. The mission of the earth, now controlled and subdued by the hand of man, is of a new character. Her vesture is changed. The swaying forest is replaced by fields of waving green. The water-courses are carefully cleared and opened, and the draining tile permeates every spot considered the least too wet; and should a shower fall it is caught and hurried

off to some natural reservoir-be it brook, lake or river, there again to be as hurriedly evaporated, and possibly to be condensed as a flood among the Pennsylvania hills.

But I will not dwell longer in speaking of phenomena with which you are all familiar, but will at once approach the practical point of the subject of this paper, namely, the conservation of water, and will take our own county as a base of operations. Oakland county has 300 lakes set like silver mirrors in its gently undulating surface; and yet we often witness the spectacle of dry and parched fields in lieu of mantles of living green. And neighbor meets neighbor, not with the cheerful greeting of "a fine growing time, neighbor," but the salutation is "this is a terrible drouth-seems as if it never would rain again." And now I am going to imagine a little, and will suppose two neighbors meeting. They have exchanged salutations, as above, and are talking of the general desolation of things attending the drouth. They are standing in a large and naturally fertile field on the bank of a beautiful crystal lake only a feet below them, and as the "ancient mariner” in mid-ocean, suffering the horrors of thirst, exclaimed: "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink," so might these good men exclaim: "Water, water at our feet, yet our crops die of thirst." Now we will imagine a little more, and suppose that many years ago one of these men cleared the field in which they are standing, and as he considered it a rather wet piece of land, tiled it very thoroughly-he had a splendid outlet in the lake at his feet. Suppose, instead of draining directly into the lake, he had led his numerous tile drains into one main ditch or reservoir, that emptying into the lake. Now, when the dreaded drouth is approaching he closes the outlet of his main ditch or reservoir and with a pump of sufficient power he raises the water of the lake back into the reservoir, which, seeking its level, follows back the tile from which it was so rudely ejected, and there, being conserved, is an obedient servant to the wants of man. Obeying the law of capillary attraction, it permeates every particle of the soil, and with evaporation constantly drawing it upward, it is caught and utilized by the hungry mouths of millions of tiny rootlets; and the loaded heads of grain above bow in welcome gratitude.

I can readily conceive that two pertinent questions may now be asked, namely, will this method of conserving water produce the desired results; and will not the expense be too great to render it practicable? To the first question I would answer: There is a tract of 700 acres of land in the Saginaw valley, known as the "McGraw farm.' I recollect it 20 years ago as a vast marsh; today it stands, in my judgment, as the model farm in Michigan. I visited it two years ago, knowing it could be irrigated in the manner I have described. A portion of this farm lies below the level of the Saginaw river, and is protected from high water by embankments. At the time of my visit I found the gates open, and the river's waters doing their work, in the numerous under-ground drains, of producing a bountiful crop above, and the gentlemanly superintendent of the farm, Mr. Azure, informed me "that they knew nothing about drouths, for in three days after letting the river in the ditches, the fields would be as green as a leek."

Now, as to cost, very much will depend on location and the "lay of the land." With a natural or artificial head, say a lake in the hills or a river dammed, all pumping could be dispensed with; the water conveyed in races and let on and utilized as needed. Undoubtedly this scheme of draining

and irrigating would cost much money; but are not drouths also very expensive? Take the loss on the two crops of corn and potatoes alone in Oakland county this year (I have no statistics to guide me) as compared with the crop which might have been reasonably expected had there been sufficient rain, I venture the assertion that the value of the shortage, figured in dollars, would build many miles of ditches, and pump several lakes dry, if necessary.

But I will not dwell longer on the subject. I started out to show that the primeval forests are nature's great conservators of water; they disappear before the hand of man, but he finds the drop of water as necessary to form the life blood of a blade of grass, as of the giant oak or towering pine; and having opened up the avenues for rapid evaporation, he must restore the equilibrium by providing storage. Then will the "wilderness blossom like the rose" and a drouth become a thing of the past.

DISCUSSION OF METEOROLOGY AND DISEASE.

BY A. ARNOLD CLARK, LANSING, MICH.

Dr. Johnson once said that, when two Englishmen met, they always commenced talking about the weather,-each trying to tell the other something which neither knew anything about. It seems perfectly proper that we should have a paper here on this subject in which all of us have taken such a deep interest under more or less embarrassing circumstances-and from one who does know something about it.

The villages in India have an official whose duty it is to make rain. They call him a gapogari. In times of drouth he is led forth every morning and pounded. So we have such an official in Michigan. Mr. Conger is our gapogari, only his duty is not to make rain but to discover how nature does it. We never pound him. We are civilized enough to know that, no matter how many rain flags he puts up, he can not make it rain.

Now the difference between the Indian gapogari and Sergt. Conger is the difference between the meteorology of the past and the meteorology of the present. A century ago it was believed that rain was the work of devils. A century ago a book was published entitled "Hand-book of prayers against bad weather with sighs for use when it lightens fearfully." They used to ring consecrated bells to stop a storm. Prof. White tells of a monastery built only 15 years ago off the southern coast of France where a sacred bell was put in and baptized by four bishops with a formula stating that it would drive off tempests, but-high above the bell and the spires-was a lightning

rod.

The barometer and the thermometer-instruments for measuring the weight and heat of the atmosphere-are only two hundred years old and the great science of meteorology is a very modern one.

But I was asked today,-why should we discuss this subject at this Convention? What has the weather to do with sanitary science? In the first place your city could not lay a sewer or drain unless you knew the average

rainfall and the greatest single rainfall. So the scientific farmer must know about the different soils, the amount of moisture they will absorb-the influence of forests on temperature, on wind and frost, on rain and drouth. Now, not only his crops but his health as well depend on climatic conditions. We often hear rheumatic people say that they can foretell a storm. So men are in low spirits when the barometer is. But there are other more intricate connections between climate and health, which are now matters of proof. For example cholera always follows a light rainfall and typhoid fever occurs when water in wells is low. We can predict pneumonia in January just as certainly as we can predict cold weather and just because we can predict cold weather.

The Secretary of the State Board of Health has collected statistics concerning thousands of deaths, thousands and thousands of cases of sickness and hundreds of thousands of observations of temperature, and from their comparison has been able to prove that pneumonia invariably increases as the temperature falls. This evidence has been grouped, in the form of a diagram, for each of many different diseases.

ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE AND PNEUMONIA.

TABLE-By months for a period of eight years, 1877-84, the relation between SICKNESS from PNEUMONIA and the average temperature of the atmosphere, in Michigan.

39. 62. 66. 62. 56. 42. 27.

Oct. Nov. Dec.

23. 35. 48.

peraturet

18. 14. 18. 46.74 21.43 25.60 31.04 44.48 56.60 65.54 70.68 68.85 62.05 51.34 35.99 27.25

Indicating what per cent of all reports received stated the presence of pneumonia then under the observation of the physicians reporting.

The average temperature is stated in degrees Fahr., and is for groups of several stations in different parts of the State.

NOTE. Here is a table exhibiting such evidence relative to atmospheric temperature and sickness from pneumonia; and, on the opposite page, is a diagram exhibiting the same evidence in a graphic and easily apprehended form.