ove a curse if it is not looked after. If you give the water a
chance to make gullies in your fields, you lose not only the water but
the best of the soil also. If you cultivate your fields with care, most
of the water will soak into the ground. If you are a wise farmer you
know also that cultivation of the soil helps to hold the water, for it
cannot escape through loose soil as it can through compact soil. Thus if
you know how to handle both the water and the soil, you can, with only a
little rain, accomplish a great deal.

[Illustration: Scene below an irrigation reservoir near Richfield,
Idaho, showing a field irrigated by means of canals and ditches.]

We can, then, hold or _conserve_ the water, first, by leaving the
steeper slopes covered with vegetation; second, by keeping the soil
loose; and, third, by building reservoirs to hold the floods. We can
make use of the conserved water by carrying it in pipes or ditches to
those regions where it is needed. We can get rid of too much water by
draining the swamps, and building dikes to protect lowlands from river
floods.

Let us now learn something of the different uses of water. Every one of
our homes has its water supply. In the city the water comes through
pipes from some distant reservoir. In the country the homes are so far
apart that it is difficult to supply them in this way. The water in the
streams is often not suitable for drinking, and if there are no springs
near by it has to be obtained by some other means. Nearly everywhere in
the earth under our feet water can be found by digging or boring a well.
Sometimes we have to go only a few feet, at other times many hundreds of
feet. This water in the earth, or _ground water_, is of very great
importance. It enables us to build our homes where we wish. Spring water
is that which finds its way to the surface through some tiny crack or
fissure in the rocks. How delicious is the pure, cold water that comes
out of the shady hollow in the hills! You can form in your minds a
picture of the rain falling on some distant mountain, of its soaking
into the ground and finally reaching the little crevices in the rocks.
Along these crevices it may have crept for days and perhaps years until
at last it found an outlet in some spring.

The great river flows by so quietly that we often forget in how many
ways it is serving us. It serves not only those upon its banks but those
who live hundreds of miles away and who, perhaps,