Suppose some American publisher should announce a new illustrated biography of President and Mrs. Roosevelt, "in fortnightly parts at a popular price." Fancy the American public taking so many bites of a cherry as that. But this is what the English people like, and a London publisher announces such a life of King Edward and the Queen. The Duke of Argyll's biography of Queen Victoria ("Victoria R. I., her Life and Empire," Harper & Brothers) was issued by this serial method in England, but when it reached the United States it was immediately set up in book form and put between covers. This is the authoritative life of Queen Victoria, written by her son-in-law, the Marquis of Lorne, now the ninth Duke of Argyll. In 1871 the Marquis of Lorne married H. R. H. Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Her Majesty the Queen. Besides the rare advantage of being a member of the Queen's family, and thus having access to the more intimate details of her history, the Marquis of Lorne is an author of versatility and charm.

Apropos of the approaching celebration at Paris of the centenary of the birth of Victor Hugo, a rumor is printed by the London Academy to the effect that certain distinguished literary men will be invited to attend, each one to represent the literature of his own tongue. Hauptmann is mentioned as the probable German guest, Gorky the Russian, and Kipling the English. This should be a great function for France, whether she celebrates the Hugo of "Les Misérables," or him of the beautiful "Love Letters" to Adèle Foucher, which were published last year under the editorship of M. Meurice, who with the able M. Vacquerie,

has proven himself an admirable literary

(xecutor.

Harper & Brothers announce a second edition of Thomas Hardy's new volume of verse, "Poems of the Past and the Present," which they published early in December. The book has also reached its second edition in England. Hardy is not a prophet who is without honor in his own country. Sir George Douglas has just written a book about him in which he states his conviction that Hardy has had a powerful influence on the thought and writing of our times so much so that he believes future historians, in describing the literature of our day, will refer to it as "the Hardy age."

President Hadley of Yale is winning golden opinions in England through his thoughtful book, "The Education of the American Citizen." The President of Yale University," says the Spectator, “could not have more effectually justified at once the recent celebrations at that comparatively ancient institution and his own official position than by the publication of a volume of essays and addresses characterized as these are by thought which is at once ripe, reverent, and selfrestrained."

Graham Balfour's two-volume "Life of Robert Louis Stevenson" has run into another edition already, and is now in its fourteenth thousand. This situation in America makes it interesting to recall the British astonishment that the London publishers should have printed as many as five thousand.

Messrs. Thomas Y. Crowell & Company announce the third printing of Halliwell Sutcliffe's strong novel, entitled "Mistress Barbara." This clean, sweet story recalls Hardy at his best.

WITH surprising suddenness the

popular interest has shifted from external expansion six thousand miles away to internal expansion within our own dooryards. The term "internal expansion" is a felicitous one, because it summarizes in a neat phrase just what irrigation. is expected to do for certain arid sections in the West. During the past few years the country has been so busy expanding by the annexation of new territory that it has overlooked the fact that a vast expansion was possible without the addition of another foot of land to that which we now possess.

With two recently appointed Westerners in the Cabinet to fill vacant portfolios, and with a President who is more than half a Westerner at heart, the great trans-Mississippi States believe that they are in for an innings at last at the national capital. No part of our story as a people is at the same time more inspiring and more pathetic than that which has to do with the

THE NEW YORK, PUBLIC LIBRARY

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agricultural pioneers who have made. and are making the great West. In toil and penury and amid manifold discouragements they have carved out State after State with no result to themselves at all commensurate to the public gain. Dwellers in the new cities which have sprung up among them have grown rich, or at least have enjoyed the refinements of civilization, but the farmers and small ranchmen have done neither. The nation at large owes them two practical aids: a chance to fight against nature successfully by means of irrigation, and a chance to market their goods with some margin of profit to themselves. The second of these must wait for the present, but the first appears to be on the eve of attainment. President Roosevelt knows the West as no other President has ever known it, and his influence has already been cast into the scale in favor of "Internal Expansion." The settler is looking for a new home, and, crowded out of the developed East, his eyes are turned

perforce to the arid regions of the West.

Any large extension of irrigated territory is no longer possible without government aid. The lands adjacent to the waterways and feasible of irrigation by means of small ditches have already been taken up. Any adequate enlargement of the watered area would necessitate the storage of water which is not at present utilized. In other words, immense reservoirs in which to store the water not in present demand, large canals in which to convey the water from the rivers to the distant arid lands, headgates and dams and fluines for the control of the supply, would have to be built at so great a cost that private and corporate enterprise, looking always to immediate dividends, declines the task as unprofitable. The States in which the arid regions are situated are too poor to attempt the building of such an extensive system of works. mains only the national government. Unless Congress offers relief, the reclaiming of what used to be known in our school geographies as the Great American Desert must be at a standstill.

Re

The problem which confronts the government is twofold, the conservation of the water supply and its equitable distribution. The question is much complicated by the fact that the vested rights in water already existing are so conflicting. The claims to the present supply of water exceed many times the aggregate amount of available supply. The reason for this is that in the carly days of irrigation the question of the use of water or of

its equitable distribution among users was of very minor importance. There was enough for everybody, and it did not materially matter how much was wasted. Irrigators might take what they pleased and leave the rest. With the usual western largeness of conception rights to water were disposed of with a prodigal hand. Appropriators were granted good title to more water than the source supplied or their ditches could divert. The laterals carried more than was needed, and the farmers held by contract a right to many times as much water as they could use. The subject of irrigation was a new one. How much water could be supplied or how much per acre was needed to irrigate was not known. This is shown almost ludicrously in the water contracts of the early days, which in many cases. appear to have been drawn up almost at haphazard without the slightest conception of the amount of water which the land needed or which the canal company could supply. In one State enough water was awarded a farm in one hundred days to submerge it in a lake 23 feet deep, while the farm across the boundary fence was allowed in the same time only 1.5 feet. Mr. Elwood Mead, the expert in charge of the irrigation investigations of the government made in 1899, cites as an illustration of the original conceptions of farmers and irrigation officials as to the actual necessities of irrigation the case of the watered district of the Poudre River of Colorado, which district ranks among the highest in the intelligence of its community and the excellence

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of its water system. early ditches together irrigated about 1,000 acres of land. The ditches were small and could only water the bottom lands along the stream, but the adjudication decree appropriated them 692 cubic feet per second, sufficient water to have irrigated 41,520 acres. In other words, forty times as much water was used as was necessary, and more than a hundred times as much as is used for the same land on the Poudre under present methods. The application of more skillful and scientific methods will probably increase still further the acreage to be watered by this supply from fifty to a hundred per cent.

In those sections of the West which are imperfectly watered by rainfall are many thousands of settlers who are much harassed by the uncertainty of crops. In many cases they so utterly fail to secure a crop that they do not obtain enough grain to seed their land next year. These men have paid into the national treasury millions of dollars for their lands, and in trying to develop them have lost their little all; they have given many years of their lives in great hardship and continual disappointment only to have their labors wiped out by continuous droughts; they have been heavily burdened by taxation and have been hampered by the necessarily heavy freight charges incurred in marketing their products. To these settlers who have already obtained vested rights by settlement the government owes the first duty in regard to irrigation. The reclamation of additional arid lands,

much as it is to be desired, is a small consideration compared with the increased productiveness and securtiy of crops which the building of reservoirs will give to present settlers. As shown by the census statistics, the farms upon which irrigation is now used have less than one-third of their surface watered every year. To supply water to the remaining portions of these farms before extending the irrigated area to other lands would be the part of economy and justice. The irrigation of newly reclaimed public lands with the water which should be stored in reservoirs to meet the demands of these settlers would be an inequity which is to be guarded against carefully. A scientific and systematic conservation of the water by the national government is a desideratum much to be fostered; reservoirs at the headwaters and in the channels of streams must be built by the government alone, for they so vitally affect those living in touch with the streams that they cannot be trusted in private hands; but this economy of water must provide strictly and fairly for the vested rights of private ownership. It may be stated at this point in passing that an additional reason for the government's building and controlling the needed reservoirs of the main streams lies in the fact that many of the headwaters of these rivers are to be found in the national forest reserves. The building of these water conserves would be in line with the steps already taken by the government to preserve the mountain forest parks. Under no conditions should private owner