406 
TRANSVERSE EMBANKMENTS. 
For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of 
opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes ought to he 
abandoned, or, where that cannot be done without involving 
too great a sacrifice of existing constructions, their elevation 
should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the 
lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and they should be pro¬ 
vided with sluices to admit the water without violence when¬ 
ever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not 
been erected, and where they have been reduced in height, it 
is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse 
embankments of moderate height running from the banks of 
the river across the plains to the hills which bound them. 
These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of 
inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves 
over a greater surface, and thus retarding the flow of the river 
currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fer¬ 
tilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood. 
Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method 
of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to com¬ 
bine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time 
to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less 
liable.* The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity 
and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, 
and is looked upon with favor by many persons very compe¬ 
tent to judge in such matters. He proposes to commence wfith 
the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by 
covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks 
of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other nar¬ 
row points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers 
of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much accord¬ 
ing to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their 
northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he 
square miles, of the plain, to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet 
in its lower parts.—B aumgakten, after Lombakdini, volume before cited, 
p. 152. 
* Moyens de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol quHls rasa- 
gent, et d'empecher les grander Inondations. 
