CHARACTER OF GROUNDS DIKED IN. 409 
have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of 
the Christian era than they have gained by diking and drain- 
ing. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating the loss 
from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he esti- 
mates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bun- 
der, or one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand 
acres, of fen and marsh have been washed away, or rather de- 
prived of their vegetable surface and covered by water; and 
thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one thousand four hun- 
dred acres, of recovered land, have been lost by the destruction 
of the dikes which protected them.* The average value of 
land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds 
sterling, or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and 
morass was not worth more than one twenty-fifth part of the 
same price. The ground buried by the drifting of the dunes 
appears to have been almost entirely of this latter character, 
and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil added by 
human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the 
historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which 
has fallen a prey to the waves during the same era. 
Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Nether- 
lands, the maritime currents are constantly changing, in con- 
sequence of the variability of the winds, and the shifting of 
the sand-banks, which the currents themselves now form and 
now displace. While, therefore, at one point the sea is advanc- 
ing landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the under- 
mining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at another 
by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually 
widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast-lands selected for 
diking-in are always at points where the sea is depositing pro- 
ductive soil. The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the 
Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde bring down large quantities 
of fine earth. The prevalence of west winds prevents the 
waters from carrying this material far out from the coast, and 
it is at last deposited northward or southward from the mouth 
* Starine, Voormaals en Thans, p. 163. 
