DRYING UP OF LAKES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1448, 5 January 1887, Page 3

DRYING UP OF LAKES.

We know, or have good rearon for snppos'ne, that ihe Oaaplan and the Aral once communicated wi-h the ocean &« the Ac >f and the Black Sea do now, and that, the Jordan flowed m to tre Fed Pea through the vale of Sodom, as it sill dn«s through the ( <ake of Tiberias ; but to M Yadrin^ateff we owe a cartographical demonstration of the rate at whfoh tHN d>-y---ing up of the lakes In the Aral o<«»pUn (Je jreasion is proce j dlnif la the l»Bt nnmber of Trannactl'ini cf the St Petersburg Geographical S'>olety, he haa given a m%p showing the group of Inkei m theG->ve'n-ments of To»ri«k and Tobolak aooordi^c to survey In 1784. which, though an old is evidently aocurate, together with o*h r r<i ♦aVcn m more recent *nrveyn. v'z.. 1818---20 1850-60. ntd iv :g3O The rapidi'y with which the lakes am d-'aapDealng will Astonish mot".. Whole villageH have tprung up m what was onoe Lake Molaki. the width cf whioh has boe.n reduced from twenty miles to three. Of Lake AbyahVan wh'ch was !e«a than eighty yeara ae;o foriv mH<B by eevencofn, and oivore-d 630 iqiiare mileo, only thro;) ponds remain the largest being harrlly n mila and a half wile In any part. Even within the lust twenty-five years several lakoi, eight o y ten tulles aoioos have entirely or nearly disappeared. The pr oesa is not one of geographical or geological Interest alone, for if it cannot be r peedHy arrested by thn planting of forastß, realons ?lre*dy arid will b> reduced to absolute desert,