lo KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



improvement adopted by the River Commission. It is held by Captain Eads and 

 others that the elevation of the bed of the river is due to the scattering of the 

 water in. times of flood, and that the remedy consists in confining it to its legiti- 

 mate channel. The spreading of the water over a wide expanse deadens the cur- 

 rent and produces deposits of the sediment which the water bears, and the more 

 the water is spread out the greater this deposit becomes. As the bed of the river 

 is elevated the facility of overflow is increased, and the deposit of silt in the bed 

 of the river is gradually increasing and the river is filling up with a constantly 

 increasing rapidity. But if the engineer of the Pascagoula inlet is correct, the 

 mouth of the river is gradually rising, and all the effects ascribed to a gradual 

 elevation of the river bed may proceed from this cause. What has been suppos- 

 ed to be an elevation of the river bed, may bs, after all, a subsidence of the river 

 banks. 



That the river has been gaining on the low lands along its banks during the 

 period which has elapsed since those lands were occupied for agricultural pur- 

 poses, is certain. Lands which were once practically exempt from inundation 

 through the protection of slight levees are now virtually unavailable for culti- 

 vation through their almost certain liability to overflow. The theory of Captain 

 Eads is that the river is rising above them, but the Pascagoula engineer suspects 

 that they are sinking beneath the river. There are no old observations that we are 

 aware of by which the level of the water in the gulf may be tested. The engin- 

 eer in charge at Pascagoula inlet refers to no statistics to substantiate his opinion 

 that the coast is subsiding, but appears to base it solely on the evidences furnished 

 by his explorations that such a physical change is going on. That there has been 

 a relative change between the level of the bed of the lower river and the land 

 along its banks within the last half century is certain. What has caused this 

 change is not so certain. Either of the two causes assigned is sufficient, and a 

 few years of observation would decide as to the value of either. Of course the 

 operation of either cause is very gradual. The river, if it is filling up at all, is 

 filling up very slowly; and the land, if it is sinking, is going down very gradually. 

 It is only by accurate observations through a series of years that the true factor of 

 change can be detected. Whatever it may be, it can not affect the plan adopted 

 for the improvement of the river; but if the lands which have not very far back 

 in time risen above the waves of the Gulf are again sinking beneath them, their 

 owners ought to know it. They are now struggling against present disaster with 

 the hope of future prosperity, and if that hope is baseless the sooner they know 

 it the better. They are wasting time in trying to live down the assaults of the 

 river if their real enemy is the gulf, and the Government would do well to instruct 

 its engineers to either verify or prove their inference. — Globe- Democrat. 



Sir Wyville Thompson has estimated that the pressure on a man's body at a 

 depth of 12,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea would be equal to a weight of 

 twenty locomotives, each with a good train loaded with pig-iron. 



