270 
Agriculture of Denmark. 
the sea sloping^, so as to break tlie force of tlie waves. The 
section below represents their outline. 
Honil 
On the first 12 feet there is only a rise of 1 foot; higher up 
this rise increases to 1 in 6 or 1 in 4 feet. The top, from 16 to 
18 feet wide, is called the " Crown," and serves as a highway. 
Towards the land they are steep, and built with terraces for the sake 
of strength. The earth for their construction is taken from 
pits, which must, however, not be close at hand, lest they should 
weaken the foundation. The dykes are generally covered with 
grass-turf, and are placed at some distance from the sea, that 
they may not be exposed to its continuous action. Where this 
precaution is not observed the slope must be paved, but, as stones 
must be biought from Norway, this is a most expensive process. 
Already in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dykes existed, 
but they were small and badly constructed. The largest number 
was built in the sixteenth century. They begin at Hoyer, in the 
north of Sleswig, and stretch as far as " Wedel," near Altona, a 
distance of 188 English miles. 
A piece of land thus embanked is called a " K()ug," and the 
total area they cover exceeds 900 English s()uare miles. Within 
the last eighteen months something like 12,000 acres of land, 
near Hoyer, in Sleswig, have in this way been rescued from the 
sea and cultivated ; it is supposed that eighty years ago this 
tract of land formed part of the ocean. In the course of time 
new deposits have formed a fresh foreland, and new dykes have 
been constructed outside the old ones, and thus land has con- 
tinued to be wrested from the sea to such an extent that some of 
the oldest dykes are situated at a distance of 9 English miles 
from the coast. Those in the marshes, no longer necessary as a 
protection against the sea, are yet indispensable as highways, it 
being impossible to make roads on the marsh-land level, because 
it is frequently inundated from the interior of the country. The 
marsh-land being flat, with but a trifling elevation above the sea, 
the water from the high-land of the interior finds no natural outlet. 
Self-acting sluices are therefore constructed, which close as the 
tide rises and open again as it falls, the double gates opening 
