m all the glens across their mouths, and
turn them into reservoirs.

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings"--Well, that will have to be
done. That is being done more and more, more or less well. The good
people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good people of
Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, and have saved
many a human life thereby already. But it must be done, some day, all
over England and Wales, and great part of Scotland. For the mountain
tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful law of nature, compensate for
their own poverty by yielding a wealth which the rich lowlands cannot
yield. You do not understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow
neither corn nor grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow,
without which we should have no corn nor grass, and that is--water. Not
only does far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but
even in drought the high moors condense the moisture into dew, and so
yield some water, even when the lowlands are burnt up with drought. The
reason of that you must learn hereafter. That it is so, you should know
yourself. For on the high chalk downs, you know, where farmers make a
sheep-pond, they never, if they are wise, make it in a valley or on a
hill-side, but on the bleakest top of the very highest down; and there,
if they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed
dews of night will keep some water in it all the summer through, while
the ponds below are utterly dried up. And even so it is, as I know, with
this very moor. Corn and grass it will not grow, because there is too
little "staple," that is, soluble minerals, in the sandy soil. But how
much water it might grow, you may judge roughly for yourself, by
remembering how many brooks like this are running off it now to carry
mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea.

But why should we not make dams at once; and save the water?

Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy the water when we had
stored it. The rich in town and country will always take care--and quite
right they are--to have water enough for themselves, and for their
servants too, whatever it may cost them. But the poorer people are--and
therefore usually, alas! the more ignorant--the less water they get; and
the less they care to have water; and the less they are inclined to pay
for it; and the more, I am sorry to say, they waste what little they do
get; and I am still