Now that autumn weather is fairly here and the summer rainy season is ended it is possible to estimate the destruction wrought by floods this season. Less of life and property has keen reported from the basin of nearly every river in Shansi. As usual, however, the Fen River has been the principal offender. Several times during the summer it has gone out of its banks in various districts. The greatest damage was done in Pingyaohsien, where more than 20 villages were inundated. The loss in the destruction of growing crops and in the falling of houses was very large. There was also a consider-~ alte loss of life in this district: in one village of 300 souls one-to have been drowned. The motor third of the people are reported
read connecting Pingyao with' Fenchow has been washed out to such an extent that some think it can never be rebuilt.
FLOODING OF THE FEN, Second in seriousness only to that wrought in Pingyao was the damage done by the waters of the Fen in Taiyuanhsien, south of the provincial capital, In that district 13 villages were inundated. To anyone who was familiar with the feeble and inefficient efforts to contro] the Fen following the great floods of 1913 the inundations of the past summer occasioned no surprise. The slovenly heaping up of earth along the banks of the river, with no subsequent efforts to keep the dykes so made in repair, will never protect the fertile acres of central Shansi from destructive floods. Greater intelligence must be brought to bear upon the whole problem, and the help of the best modern engineers must be enlisted. It is a crying shame that a province with so great a reputation for progressiveness as Shansi should have failed so signally in meeting one of the greatest of her conservation problems. To those' who may undertake the control of the Fen River that is so urgently needed we commend the saying of the great Li Ping of Szechuan, Dig deep the channel, keep the banks low."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.