Vi PREFATORY NOTE. 



writers have of late, through the newspaper press, been urging 

 the Government to take advantage of their right to the fore- 

 shores of the country by affording every possible facility to 

 public companies and landed proprietors to embark in reclama- 

 tions.* Some of those English writers seem to maintain that 

 by wholesale national reclamation the agricultural resources of 

 the country may be made to keep pace with its growing popu- 

 lation, so as to check our increasing dependence on foreign 

 countries for supplies of agricultural produce. 



The following short treatise, however, demonstrates that all 

 schemes of reclamation are not necessarily good agricultural 

 speculations; and that it is only where the estimated value 

 of the land to be gained from the sea is deduced from well- 

 ascertained physical facts, and the works by which it is to be 

 reclaimed and protected are based on sound engineering prin- 

 ciples, that the result may safely be relied on as successful. 



* See "Times," " Daily Telegraph," " Edinburgh Cou rant," &c. , for January 

 1874. 



