rolls on peacefully to the sea. Most of the actors of those scenes have passed to the great beyond, and those who still remain with us have ceased their bitter animosities and perceive many noble points in each other's characters. The memories of the dead are today kept green, and the living bestrew the graves of the departed with fragrant flowers!

THE BETTER PLAN.

(FOR THE IMPROVEMENT ERA.)

Stand not and gaze so longingly,

On things you think most fair;
For men are often caught with show,
As moths are caught by glare.
Ofttimes the face that looks so fair
Is but a paltry sham;

Just wait and view it when unmasked,

'Tis far the better plan.

The hollow smiles that charm the gay,

Are nothing more than show;

For well-springs of true friendship lie,

Deep in the heart, you know.

The giddy laugh and empty word,

Are traps for erring man.

Choose thou the hand with friendship warm,

'Tis far the better plan.

Too oft do we the surface view,

The ripple on the stream,
And of the current never think,

That flows beneath, unseen.

Too oft we cast the good aside,

In this our measured span,

And wreck our bark of life by not

Choosing the better plan.

Sarah E. Mitton.

SOME SOURCES OF WATER SUPPLY.

BY DR. JOHN A. WIDTSOE, DIRECTOR OF EXPERIMENT STATION, STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, LOGAN, UTAH.

Water vapor, obtained from the ocean, through the heat of the sun, is moved as clouds from ocean to land, and from continent to continent, by the ordinary circulation of the atmosphere. A moving atmospheric mass or wind which encounters a long mountain range, tends to force its way up the sides of the high mountains until the crest is reached, when, if strength still remains, it rushes down the other mountain side. But, in rising to higher altitudes, air expands, and the expansion, in accordance with a well established law of physics, results in a corresponding cooling. At the temperature which prevails near the surface of the ocean, the water vapor carried by the air is enabled to remain in its vaporous condition; but, as it rises along the mountain sides, the cooling is sufficient to condense it to rain or snow. Thus it happens that the great mountain ranges and peaks become great condensers of the moisture carried from the ocean into the interior of the continents. This water, falling upon the mountains, finds its way back again into the ocean, whence it is again evaporated, driven landward, and again condensed by some mountain range. Thus, throughout all the ages, water has gone through the phases of circulation: ocean water, water vapor, clouds, snow or rain, river water, and ocean water again.

In a similar manner, water which is evaporated from wet soil, or which is transpired by the leaves of plants, rises into the air to form rain clouds, which, whenever they are cooled sufficiently, especially by coming into contact with great mountain chains, are precipitated as rain or as snow.

Some of the water vapor taken from the Pacific Ocean is driven by the winds eastward until it strikes the Sierra Nevada mountains, where it is condensed and falls as rain or snow. The air, coming from these mountains to us, is largely robbed of its moisture, and produces little or no precipitation. So also, the water vapor coming from the east is condensed by the high mountains to the east of us. Thus, we, living in the Great Basin, are, in a measure, surrounded by mountains which rob us of much of the water that would otherwise reach us; and as a result, the climatic conditions under which we live are those of an arid country. Still, the fact that we have mountains throughout the whole state, is one reason why our conditions are not so desert as they might be; for, owing to these great water condensers, rain clouds, that may venture into the Great Basin, are condensed and precipitated for our benefit; and likewise the evaporation of water from lakes, rivers, soil and plants, within the Basin, is precipitated and largely prevented from leaving this locality.

Water which immediately runs off the mountain sides into the rivers, is of little value to the people. Of the greatest benefit is that portion of the rain or snowfall which descends gradually into the valleys, to furnish the necessary flow of water during the summer, when crops are growing.

One of the great allies of the farmer in retaining and delaying the loss of the water that falls upon the mountains, is the forest growth, which, under natural conditions, covers the greater part of the mountain districts of the State of Utah.

It is frequently asserted that forests tend to cause precipitation of rain or snow; and it is also believed that the growing of many trees in a neighborhood increases the annual rainfall there. Long continued and numerous investigations upon this subject have not been able to prove conclusively that forests tend to increase or decrease the rainfall. Another statement, commonly made, is that hail-storms are very frequent where forests are abundant. This also has been subjected to careful study and has been shown to be unfounded.

The main relation of forests to water supply is in the conservation of the water that may fall within the forest. It is true that, in certain respects, forests cause a loss which does not occur

in districts that are bare. For instance, all of the rain that falls above bare ground, reaches the soil, while a certain amount of the rain that falls over forests never reaches the soil, but is retained by the leaves and branches and trunks of the trees. In like manner, a portion of the snow that may fall over forests is retained by the leaves and branches of the trees; and to that extent, forests cause a loss of water to the soil below them. Nevertheless, the conservation, by the forests, of the water that actually reaches the soil, is so great as to offset many times the loss which is due to the interception of rain or snow by the leaves and branches of the trees.

The greatest loss of water from soils, is due to evaporation; and the two chief forces in causing evaporation are sunshine and wind.

Anything that will diminish the amount of direct sunshine on a piece of wet soil, or diminish the amount of wind, will, to that extent, diminish also the evaporation of water from that soil. In this respect, forests are of prime importance. Within the forest groves there is more or less continuous dense shade; and even young forests have a great power of breaking the force of moving atmospheric masses. One need only recall that, in Utah, the mountain sides facing the south are bare in the spring from one to three weeks before the snow is melted from the sides that face the north, to prove the evaporating effect of direct sunshine. Likewise, every boy who has been brought up on an irrigated farm knows that one or two days of heavy wind will draw the water out of the ground, bake the soil and wilt the crops, and make immediate irrigation necessary. If for no other reason than the protection which they afford the soil against direct sunshine and wind, the forests of our mountains should be jealously guarded. Experiments on this subject have shown that one-third as much water evaporates from a pan full of water standing in the forest as from one that stands upon bare ground away from any shade; and it has been found that from a small piece of bare soil, on which no plants grow, within the forest, only one-third as much water evaporates as from the similar piece of ground in the open.

With regard to snow, this relation holds true, also. As has been stated, a small part of the snow is intercepted by the leaves

and branches of the trees, yet that portion which falls within the forest, lies there more evenly, and longer; and the soil is prevented from freezing to great depths, so that it may begin early in the season to absorb the water from the melted snow. There is an idea that snow lying in the open is easily drifted into the ravines where a thick layer is formed, which lasts longer into the summer season than would a thin layer. This fact is sometimes used as an argument against the advisability of protecting the forests of our mountains. This notion is based on a misapprehension; for every thinking observer knows that winds "wear out the snow." As the snow is drifted from place to place, it is reduced to fine particles, which expose new surfaces, from which evaporation and melting begin anew; and before the ravine is filled, many times the weight of the snow deposited has been worn out by the wind and returned to the air as invisible water vapor. The amount of water that comes, during the summer, from such drifted snowmasses is small as compared with the water which has been stored in the soil upon the mountain sides, and which percolates into the streams the whole summer long.

Thus we come to the question concerning the manner in which the water from the rains or melted snows of the mountains is held back until late summer, when it can be used most advantageously for purposes of irrigation.

Water, poured upon the soil, soaks downward and forms a thin film of water around every soil particle as far down as the water can penetrate. After all the soil particles have been moistened, the addition of more water will tend to fill up the spaces between the particles, and this water, by its own weight, will gradually move downward until it reaches the bottom of the soil, when it will filter out and perhaps become a mountain spring, or may be carried by subterranean channels into the rivers. If the surface of the soil is loose, the rain or melted snow that falls upon it, soaks into it easily, and sinks gradually to the lower layers. If evaporation from the surface is prevented or diminished, the water stored by the soil will continue, during the spring and summer, to filter down through the soil and feed the mountain springs. If the surface soil is heavily packed together, the rain or snow water may remain on the surface as puddles, and is then likely to be evapor