ABSTRACT
The liability to floods will be at once apparent if the reader considers the extent of the areas from which rain water and the yield of countless springs, brooks, and rivulets may flow into the principal rivers. In times of heavy storms or of continuous rainy weather, rivers which drain up to 5000 square miles of country may well experience floods involving a serious impediment to navigation. The liability of English rivers to a shortage of water would seem to be as great as their liability to excess of it. The inadequate depth of water may be due, not alone to drought, but to the formation of shoals or shallows owing to the rapid fall of the river, its excessive width, or the amount of sediment brought down from the hill-sides or washed from the bed over which it flows.
