LAND GAINED BY DIKING. 397 



Loss of Land hij Incursions of Sea. 



On the other hand, by erosion of the coast-line, the drifting of 

 sand-dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and mo- 

 rasses by incursions of the sea — all caused, or at least greatly 

 aggravated, by human improvidence — the Netherlands have lost 

 a far larger area of land since the commencement of the Christian 

 era than they have gained by diking and draining. Staring de- 

 spairs of the possibility of calculating the loss from the first-men- 

 tioned two causes of destruction, but he estimates that not less 

 than six hundred and forty thousand hunder, or one million five 

 hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh have been 

 washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and 

 covered by water ; and thirty-seven thousand htmder, or ninety- 

 one thousand four hundi'ed 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 charac- 

 ter, 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 and the sands during the same era. 



Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Nether- 

 lands, the maritime currents are constantly changing, in conse- 

 quence 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 advancing 

 landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the undermin- 

 ing and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at another by 

 its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually widen- 

 ing belt of sands and ooze. The coast-lands selected for diking-in 

 are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. 

 The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Ehine, the Maas 



previously partially served the same purpose. — WrLD, Die Niederlande, i. 

 p. 62. 

 * Staking, Voormaals en Titans, p. 163. 



