November contains a Memorial from Wu Ta-cheng, who is in charge of the works at the breach of the Yellow River. It is on the methods that have been employed in late times to restrain the impetuous floods which have wrought so much destruction of life and properly in Shantung and Honan. He begins by saying that doctors in prescribing for a disease are always careful, in the first place, to ascertain its cause, and sick people on taking medicine ought to see that the prescription suits the particular nature of their complaint; which latter reflection is, we may remark, a somewhat dangerous piece of advice, as it is analogous to advising people to be their own doctors, which experience has shown to be even more jitous, the irreverent may say, than putting trust in physicians, Past experience is, he continues, a sure ide for future conduct. He has, since he entered on the duties of his present office, been on the river banks day after day, enquiring among the old people as to the condition of things in the past, and he has tested their statements by comparing them with the historical records. The result has convinced him that the trouble with the Yellow River, far from being incapable of remedy, is really due to the want of a proper method of treatment. He condemns the present system of raising embankments and protecting them with fascines. It is not in his opinion a farsighted policy; and what is really wanted is the construction of breakwaters to divert the current, and save the embankments from being worn away, by keeping the volume of water in the main channel of the river. Those officers who have had the longest ex-agree that in the early days of Hsien perience in works on the river all
ug there were still twenty stone breakwaters of the kind existing in the Hsing-tsze section of the river. In those days the main volume of the water flowed at a considerable distance from the embankments and was separated from them by dry spaces on both sides. The breakwaters. were strengthened by fascines in times of {danger. For a number of years past the breakwaters have been entirely neglected and the water has been allowed to encroach more and more on the embankments, and Wu Ta-cheng remarks that the more fascines have been employed to protect the banks the more they have been required, and repairs ihave no sooner been effected in one
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.