AND GAINING LAND FROM THE SEA. 377 



gives them, as its present appearance plainly evinces, that at a trl* 

 lling expense T can secure Lord Ashburnham's estate from being 

 inundated ; for, whenever the first hedge is not high enough to pre- 

 vent the sea overflowing, another may be built upon the sand formed 

 fey that hedge, and so on in succession, till it is perfectly safe." 



Similar means have not only been employed to prevent encroach- 

 ments from the sea ; but in various instances to gain land from it. 

 It often happens, however, that the machinery must here be some, 

 what more complex, and intersected with drains and sluices. One 

 of the simplest schemes of this kind which we have lately met with 

 is the following by the Rev. Bate Dudley, which we shall copy in 

 his own words, as communicated to the Society for the Encourage- 

 ment of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and for which he 

 received the gold medal. 



" A tract of land, which I inclosed on the same line of coast within 

 this parish about eleven years ago (for which I was then honoured 

 with the Society*s gold medal) being already under a profitable 

 course of tillage, I was induced to undertake the present inclosure, 

 as a lessee of the collegiate estate of St. Paul's. The front line of 

 embankment against the sea is nearly one mile in length, and, with 

 the returning banks on each wing to the old wall, forms an inclosure 

 .of contents, as expressed in the certificate already in your posses- 

 sion. Tlie whole of the embankment is composed of earth alone, 

 borrowed from the irregular sailing land in the front, called chatts, 

 and taken at the limited distance of twelve feet from the base of 

 the new work, to leave a sufficient foreland for its protection. I 

 found, from experience, in my former embankment, that I had not 

 given it a sufficient angular declension in front, for an easy ascent 

 and descent of I he waves. This error was therefore corrected in 

 the last work. 1 began it on a base of thirty-two feet, and wrought 

 it to the height of seven feet, leaving it a plane of live feet on the 

 top, and making the land-side of the embankment, as nearly per- 

 pendicular as the security of the base would allow. 



* Within, on the hind-side, is cut a ditch, twelve feet wide, five 

 feet deep, and four feet at bottom ; the earth from which was 

 thrown into the mound. My former sea-embankment, in Biadwcll 

 parish, had nearly given way to the great inundating tide of Feb- 

 ruary 1J"Q2, from this erection of new earth being made on the 

 surface. To guard against similar danger in the present work, a 



