Drainage des Terres Arables, Paris, 1856.
The ends of the work, while the operations are suspended during spring tides, will need an extra protection of sods, but that lying out of reach of the eddies that will be formed by the receding water will not be materially affected.
The latest invention of this sort, is that of a series of cast iron plates, set on edge, riveted together, and driven in to such a depth as to reach from the top of the dyke to a point below low-water mark. The best that can be said of this plan is, that its adoption would do no harm. Unless the plates are driven deeply into the clay underlying the permeable soil, (and this is sometimes very deep,) they would not prevent the slight infiltration of water which could pass under them as well as through any other part of the soil, and unless the iron were very thick, the corrosive action of salt water would soon so honeycomb it that the borers would easily penetrate it; but the great objection to the use of these plates is, that they would be very costly and ineffectual. A dyke, made as described above, of the material of the locality, having a ditch only on the inside, and being well sodded on its outer face, would be far cheaper and better.