519 ROZET’S PLAN. 
erate height running from the banks of the river across the 
plains to the hills which bound them. These measures, it is 
argued, will diminish the violence of inundations by permitting 
the waters to extend themselves over a greater surface, and by 
thus retarding the flow of the river currents, will, at the same 
time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil 
covered by the flood.* 
Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method 
of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to com- 
bine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time 
to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less 
liable.t The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity 
and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, 
and is looked upon with favor by many persons very compe- 
tent to judge in such matters. It is, however, by no means ca- 
pable of universal application, though it would often doubtless 
prove highly useful in connection with the measures now em- 
ployed in South-eastern France. He proposes to commence with 
the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by 
covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks of 
rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow 
points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers of the 
same material promiscuously heaped up, much according to 
the method employed by the ancient Romans in their northern 
provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes, 
the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity 
of transported pebbles and gravel—which, by increasing the 
mechanical force of the water, greatly aggravate the damage 
by floods—much diminished. When the stream has reached 
that part of its course where it is bordered by soil capable of 
cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he proposes 
* The system described in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the 
ancient Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude 
the water. 
+ Moyens de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qwils ravagent, 
at @empécher les grandes Inondations. 
