466 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [September, 1908. 
level; at the present time the river runs many feet above the 
surrounding country, while the low lands have been drained and 
ealtivated and support a a a ste aca spikes; year by year; 
an unusually heavy flood breaks down or overtops the embank- 
ments, an: the pent-up lating aa death to iia posterity of those 
who, originally in good faith, gai the way for disaster. 
The terrible results of the embankment system in China 
should serve as a warning to Indian engineers ; it is very doubtful 
if the warning has yet been taken, and it is more than probable 
that the heavy floods which in very recent years have devastated 
several of the North Bihar districts are mainly, if not entirely, 
due to the prevalence of embankments in those parts ; “ training 
works carried out with the object of forcing a river of the nature 
of those under discussion, however small that river may be, to ot 
and maintain a course which it has no tendency to assume, m 
be contrary to the intentions of nature herself. Ane iitancnt. 
with little or no waterway through it for the carrying off of flood 
waters, is a glove thrown in nature’s face—an insult which she has 
not yet been known to leave unavenge 
I am told on good authority, by those with mature experience 
one district over eighteen inches in thirteen years, and in another 
over three feet i in Fala years ; the latter district is per bhaaee > 

the former district is Muzaffarpur, the figures. being those of 
Mr. Disney, District Maptncer, up to 1898. Se ak date the flood 
levels appear to have shown signs of f her rising, Further 
there, I am informed, lands which were dry a few years back 
are now perennially inundated. Many other ag npstsee of floods 
being on the increase —— be quoted, and it is very significant 
that in nearly every case embankments aes in ae distressed 
do serions damage although embankments do not exist in the 
neighbourhood, or, if they exist, they are too insignificant to 
be serious factors in the trouble; but as far as I can ascertain, 
there is no recorded case in which floods appear to be increasing 
in intensity in which embankments do not exist close at hand, and it 
seems to be pretty certain that where floods occur in localities in 
which there are no embankments, those floods do not appear to be 
becoming more violent as years goon, The natural inference is 
that the embankment is to blame for increases in floods under most 
circumstances. 
here is a difference of opinion as to the actual effect of 
embankments on the beds of streams, some anthorities holding that 
although the bed of the stream is undeniably raised, there is a 
limit to the possible rise. I do not consider that sufficient proof 
has yet | brought forward to show that a limit exists, and 
> on -the-point remains, we can but assume 
that ‘the damage which may occur before the limit is reached is 
nitely worse than that which would be caused, in the interim, 





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