430 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1030 



trated from the Netherlands and from 

 Great Britain. 



Motley, at the beginning of "The Dutch 

 Eepublic," writes of the Netherlands: "A 

 region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested 

 at last from both domains their richest 

 treasures." Napoleon was credited with 

 saying that the Netherlands were a deposit 

 of the Rhine, and the rightful property of 

 him who controlled the sources; and an 

 old writer pronounced that Holland was 

 the gift of the ocean and of the rivers Rhine 

 and Meuse, as Egypt is of the river Nile. 

 The crowning vision of Goethe's Faust is 

 that of a free people on a free soil, won 

 from the sea and kept for human habitation 

 by the daily effort of man. Such has been 

 the story of the Netherlands. The Nether- 

 lands, as a home for civilized men, were, 

 and are, the result of reclamation, of dykes 

 and polders. The kingdom has a constantly 

 changing area of between 12,000 and 13,- 

 000 square miles. Mr. Marsh, in his book, 

 set down the total amount gained to agri- 

 culture at the time he wrote "by dyking 

 out the sea and by draining shallow bays 

 and lakes" at some 1,370 square miles, 

 which, he says, was one tenth of the king- 

 dom; at the same time, he estimated that 

 much more had been lost to the sea — some- 

 thing like 2,600 square miles. He writes 

 that there were no important sea dykes be- 

 fore the thirteenth century, and that drain- 

 ing inland lakes did not begin till the fif- 

 teenth, when windmills came into use for 

 pumping. In the nineteenth century steam 

 pumps took the place of windmills, science 

 strengthening an already existing process. 

 Between 1815 and 1855, 172 square miles 

 were reclaimed, and this included the 

 Lake of Haarlem, some thirteen miles long 

 by six in breadth, with an area of about 

 seventy-three square miles. This was re- 

 claimed between 1840 and 1853. At the 

 present time, we are told, about forty 



square miles are being reclaimed annually 

 in Holland ; and meanwhile the Dutch gov- 

 ernment have in contemplation or in hand 

 a great scheme for draining the Zuyder 

 Zee, which amounts to recovering from the 

 ocean land which was taken by it in historic 

 times at the end of the fourteenth century. 

 The scheme is to be carried out in thirty- 

 three years and is to cost nearly sixteen 

 million pounds. The reclamation is to be 

 effected by an embankment across the 

 mouth of this inland sea over eighteen miles 

 long. The result will be to add 815 square 

 miles of land to the kingdom of the Nether- 

 lands, 750 square miles of which will be fer- 

 tile land, and in addition to create a much- 

 needed freshwater lake with an area of 557 

 square miles ; this lake is to be fed by one 

 of the mouths of the Rhine. 



London is partly built on marsh. The 

 part of London where I live, Pimlico, was 

 largely built on piles. A little way north, 

 in the center of fashion, is Belgrave Square, 

 and here a lady whom I used to know had 

 heard her grandfather say that he had shot 

 snipe. Take the City of London in the 

 strict and narrow sense. The names of 

 Moorfields and Fensbury or Finsbury are 

 familiar to those who know the city. Stow, 

 in his survey of London, over three hun- 

 dred years ago, wrote of "The Moorfield 

 which lieth without the postern called Moor- 

 gate. This field of old time was called the 

 Moor. This fen or moor field stretching 

 from the wall of the city betwixt Bishops- 

 gate and the postern called Cripplegate to 

 Fensbury and to Holywell continued a 

 waste and unprofitable ground a long 

 time. ' ' By 1527, he tells us, it was drained 

 "into the course of Walbrook, and so into 

 the Thames, and by these degrees was this 

 fen or moor at length made main and hard 

 ground which before, being overgrown with 

 flags, sedges and rushes, served to no use. ' ' 

 It is said that this fen or marsh had come 



