The first big flood that came filled up the cut-off canal and it is now useless. It would be clearly unavailing to reëxcavate it, because it would fill up again with the next big flood. The sediment which filled the canal was gathered by the river after it left the foothills and tore its way as a raging torrent through farms and fertile fields. It washed or caved them into the river and carried down and deposited the earth material in the cut-off canal. The Army engineers, however, or at least their chiefs, had steadfastly set their faces against reservoir construction for flood control. But for this they might have built the great Calaveras Reservoir which would have afforded complete protection for the city of Stockton against floods. By controlling the flood at its source, storing the flood waters, and letting them into the river below only in a volume not larger than the channel would carry, all damage to the valley and to farms lying between the foothills and the city of Stockton would have been avoided. No sediment would have been carried into the Stockton channel to impede navigation. The surplus flood water instead of running to waste would have been conserved and held back until needed for beneficial use. Any such plan as this would have been contrary to all the precedents and theories of the military engineers. All the damages resulting from failure to adopt it merely illustrate the necessity of escaping from those precedents and theories, and the pride of opinion which clings to them with such desperate tenacity. That escape must be accomplished, if we are ever to get river regulation and flood protection in this country. Stockton will never get it until the Calaveras Reservoir has been built, and no flood-menaced section of the country will get protection until it is afforded to it by engineering and constructive forces dominated by the civil and not by the military authority of the Government.