72 AGRICULTURE. 



fail to recur to his mind in due season. In the very com- 

 mencement of the seventeeth century Cornelius Vermuden 

 and the author of the " Drayner Confirmed," pointed out 

 the methods of draining Whittlesea Mere and the adjoining 

 country, almost as they are enacted in the statute of 1844, 

 and strongly recommended their execution. In like man- 

 ner, in 1640, Adrian Leegh water proposed to drain the 

 Sea of Haerlem by means which, with the substitution of 

 wind for steam power, are analogous to those which are 

 now in course of employment. 



Some years ago a Grand Ducal work was published in 

 Florence, giving a history of the operations carried on by 

 that persevering family in the Tuscan Maremma. The 

 work consists of a thick octavo volume, accompanied by a 

 thin quarto of plates and statistics, the whole got up in 

 superior style. The general engineering appears to be 

 good, and plans are given of the principal bridges, locks, 

 and weirs, as well as drawings of the tip-waggons, pile- 

 drivers, and other engines. The object of the operation 

 appears to have been, in part at least, sanitary. Tables 

 are given of the population at different eras in the Ma- 

 remma, with notices of the proportion of sick admitted 

 into the Royal hospitals, previous and subsequent to the 

 drainage. The whole work is interesting, both as it relates 

 to the recovery of land and the increase of salubrity. 



So much for the first phase of the controversy between 

 agriculture and water. It may rather be called the reco- 

 very of land than its improvement absolutely so in the 

 cases where large surfaces of water have been replaced by 

 cultivated land, and partially, to say the least, in the more 

 ambiguous cases of what old Dugdale calls overflown 

 marshes, where the contest has been settled in favour of 

 dryness and solidity. Our readers will observe that we 

 have not entered into the process of recovery that has not 

 been our object ; but we have wished to give them a suc- 

 cinct account of the existing literature on the subject, and 

 to indicate to such as are interested where they may find 



