THE annual rainfall at Baghdad over a period of sixteen years gives a maximum of 22'3I inches, a minimum of 1'47 inches, and an average of 6'3 inches. Cultivation is therefore dependent on irrigation. The Euphrates, fed by the melting of the snows on the Taurus, is in flood from March until May, and at Hit has a maximum discharge of 3600 and a minimum of 390 cubic metres per second. The channel of the Euphrates is incapable of containing such a volume, and extensive floods are the result, which reach as far as Baghdad. A strong earthen dam has therefore been built all round this town to protect it from the floods of the Euphrates and also of the Tigris. A short distance above Feludja on the Euphrates the Saklawiya Canal, constructed in ancient days, leads off and joins the Tigris just below Baghdad. This canal was navigable for steamboats up to about the year 1875, when Midhat Pasha, the Vali of Baghdad, closed the head. It now carries water only during the flood season. The result of the Pasha's action was that a large volume of water, some 750 cubic metres a second, was added to the already overburdened Euphrates channel, and caused immense damage to the country downstream of Feludja. A day's journey to the south of Baghdad lies the town of Museyib, and four miles south of this town the River Euphrates divides into two, the western arm being known as the Hindiya branch, and the eastern arm as the Hilla branch. The Hindiya branch is said to be the original bed of the Euphrates, and the Hilla branch which flows through Babylon an artificial deviation. Some confusion in the nomenclature exists, for in the time of Alexander the western arm was known as the Pallacopas, and the eastern arm as the Euphrates. The Arabian geographers however reversed this, describing the Euphrates as the western arm flowing to Hindiya and Kufa, while the branch flowing through Babylon and Hilla and Diwaniya was known as the Sura. Western geographers have generally followed the Greek use, and so in modern atlases the river of Babylon or eastern branch is called the Euphrates. On the i/M. map the two branches are named the Shatt Hilla and the Shatt Hindiya. The Euphrates flowing past Babylon and Hilla lies at a higher level than the Hindiya branch, and as it was incapable of carrying the extra supply due to the closing of the Saklawiya Canal, the water forced its way down the lower-lying Hindiya branch, swept away the old earth