In 1914, the President of China, by official mandate, brought into being the Board of Conservancy Works of Kuangtung, and ever since that year this Board, though often great-handicapped by lack of funds, has been contributing much to the prosperity of the agricultural community of Kuangtung by construeting works which prevent the rivers from damaging the farm lands during flood times, and keeping the existing. dykes in repair. It takes!
gent deal of education to. make the rural population realize the importance of niaintaining the dykes as they should be. 'True, committees have been formed in the country. tricts to keep watch over the river' embankments, but these. committee men usually have not the ability to permit of their keeping the dykes over which they have charge in the host condition. So farmers have built houses on the tops of the dykes, and as a consequence the embankments are to some extent weakened. The slopes on the sides away from the river frequently are cultivated, and the loosening of the soil weakens the protective banks. When it is found necessary to build the dykes higher, the committees as Jikely as not get the earth required to raise them a few more feet scoping it from the base of the em-Dankménts, To get. the. ignorant peasants to change these dangerous practices is not the work of a day.
Laymen are apt to be convinced that the planting of forests on the denuded hills and mountains will make all the difference in the world; that rain-water will be retarded by the network of roots and. rotting leaves, go that after. storm rivereds will not be suddenly swollen, Dut the -rise will be more gradual, enabling the streams to discharge the excess of water into the sea Iefore it has risen above the tops. of he banks, "Major G: W. Olive:
engineer-in-chief of the Conservancy "Works of uangtang, who has devoted many to the study of flood problems, thinks otherwise. IE is his profes. sional opinion that it would take so long to produce a good forest growth within the drainage basin of- these South China rivers that the present generation would be in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.