122 
AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
IMPROVEMENT OF LAND. 
ON THE DRAINAGE OF HAARLEM LAKE, WITH SUG- 
GESTIONS ON ITS APPLICABILITY TO OVERFLOWED 
LANDS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
Thrift and plenty are the ideas we ever associate with the name of 
the Netherlands. Placed in a situation in which the exercise of in- 
dustry, perseverance, prudence, and economy is essential to their very 
existence, the people of the “Low Countries” cheerfully obey the 
beneficient command to labor ; and such are the fruits of their will- 
ingness to toil, that the rest of the world behold them with wonder 
and admiration. 
From the middle of Belgium, a few miles north of Brussels, the 
country north-eastwardly becomes almost entirely a dead level, ex- 
tending in monotonous sandy and peaty flats through Hanover, J ut- 
land, Holstein, and, with little interruption, through Prussia into 
Russia. But the lowest part of this immense region, and that which 
has most recently emerged from the sea, is undoubtedly the country 
lying between the mouths of the Scheldt and the Ems ; within this dis- 
tance the Rhine, joined by the Meuse, Yssel, and other rivers, enters 
the sea, through a number of arms, and sluggish winding channels, 
which by no means represent the magnitude of their main streams as 
they appear higher up. The delta of the Rhine may be conceived to 
have been in early ages subject to perpetual changes of form, as new 
mud-banks were deposited, blocking up the old channels, and lead- 
ing to the formation of new ones. Besides, it is obvious that the 
river, in forming a domain of alluvial deposits had to contend with 
the sea, which washed away the accumulations of mud, or covered 
them with sand, according to the vicissitudes of the seasons. The 
soil of the Netherlands shows everywhere the proofs of this struggle 
between the billows of the ocean and the river floods, in the alterna- 
tion of salt and fresh water deposits. It also hears evidence to the 
fact, that these changes, effected by the inundations of the Rhine, or 
by encroachments of the sea, occurred frequently, long after the 
country had become inhabited. Remains of forests now lie buried 
under the waves of the German ocean ', paved roads and traces of 
villages and of cultivation are found beneath the morasses on the 
banks of the Ems, and many similar proofs exist of great physical 
changes, respecting which history is silent. 
For the purpose of securing the permanence of. their territorial pos- 
sessions, the early occupants of this country had recourse to dikes, 
or embankments, high and strong enough to protect them under or- 
dinary circumstances from the tides ; and, placing wind-mills on these 
