Note 227 — Chapter III · (continued 3)
Reading edition
In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the annual inundations is increased. Many towns on the banks of the river, and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring dikes for their protection.—Baumgarten, after Lombardini, in the paper last quoted, pp. 141, 147.