DKATNINa OF SWAMPS. 423 



improved in Italy by tlie draining of swamps, and extensive oper- 

 ations have been projected and commenced on the lower Rhone, 

 and elsewhere in France, with the same object.* 



But there is probably no country where greater improvements 

 of this sort have either been lately effected, or are now in course 

 of accomplishment, than in our own. JN'ot to speak of well- 

 known works on the New Jersey sea-coast and the shores of Lake 

 Michigan, the people of the new State of California are engaging 

 in this mode of subduing nature with as much enterprise and en- 

 ergy as they have shown in the search for gold. The Report of 

 the Agricultural Department of the United States for January, 

 1872, notices, with more or less detail, several highly successful 

 experiments in California in the way of swamp-drainage and 

 securing land from overflow, and it appears that not far from 

 200,000 acres have either very recently undergone or will soon 

 be subjected to this method of improvement. 



Agricultural Drammg. 



I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes 

 and other hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because 

 both the immediate and the remote results of such operations are 

 more obvious and more easily measured, though certainly not 

 more important, than those of much older and more widely dif- 



* Very interesting and important experiments, on the practicability of wash- 

 ing out the salt from sea-coast lands too highly impregnated with that mineral 

 to be fit for cultivation, are now in progress near the mouth of the Rhone, 

 where millions of acres of marshy soil can easily be recovered, if these exi)eri- 

 ments are successful. 



See DupoNCHEL, Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie agricoles. Paris, 1868, 

 chaps, xi. and xii. 



In the neighborhood of Ferrara are pools and marshes covering nearly two 

 hundred square mUes, or a surface more than equal to eight American town- 

 ships. Centrifugal steam-pumps, of 2,000 horse-power, capable of discharging 

 more than six hundred and fifty millions of gallons of water per day, have 

 lately been constructed in England for draining these marshes. This dis- 

 charge is equal to an area of 640 acres, or a mile square, with nearly three 

 feet of water. 



For a most striking and life-like picture of marsh-scenery in Italy, I would 

 refer the reader to vol. ii., p. 23, et seq., of the Mead of Medusa, by our 

 ^ted young country-woman. Miss Fletcher. 



