but destroyed by this inundation. Before that disastrous occurrence the island could be seen from the shores of Friesland, which in the days of Charles the Great was twice as large as now. The Friesland of to-day is only the southern and poorest remnant of the magnificent lands which were completely destroyed on October 11, 1684; 20 parishes and 150,000 persons disappeared beneath the waves, which broke through the dikes simultaneously in twenty-four places.

To relate all inundations would lead too far, but the most serious may be mentioned as showing the struggles in which the inhabitants of the North Sea coast are engaged. That of 1421, which swallowed 21 parishes and 100,000 persons; then the most terrible of which there is any record, and which is known as the "All Saints' Day" flood of 1570; the sea raged along the whole of the coast from Holland to Jutland for forty-eight hours, carried away all the dikes and caused the loss of 400,000 lives; the whole country lay waste for years, for the want of population to rebuild the dikes.

The Christmas flood of 1717 also visited the whole coast and 15,000 lives were lost.

During the present century the destruction by the sea has been minimized, as the dikes are now built strong and high enough to withstand the heaviest seas. The various islands along the coast act as breakwaters and protect, to a great extent, the coast line; the various governments are endeavoring to strengthen the islands by vegetation, but it appears to be only a question of time when they will disappear altogether.

Although the sea has, during the past 1,000 years, robbed the Dutch of great tracts of land, yet they have, by enduring perseverance, recovered a great deal, and there appears no doubt that they will succeed to form the Zuider Sea into rich agricultural lands, just as they have already dried up the Harlem Sea and converted it into waving cornfields.

Ground is also gained yearly in other directions, by continually extending the dikes; the richest lands on the coasts of Holland and Germany have thus been reclaimed from the ocean, and they are protected by means which secure the coasts against future encroachment.

[Continued from Supplement, No. 1080, page 17263.]

THE DE DION AND BOUTON ROAD MOTOR.

It was with a vehicle of the kind described in our last article that Messrs. De Dion and Bouton obtained a conspicuous success in 1894. In this competition they were the first to arrive at Mantes, doing the 36 miles in 3 hours, so that they made an average of 12 miles an hour; they were followed very closely by the Peugeot and Panhard-Levassor carriages. In spite of a series of difficult hills and bad roads, and an unintentional detour, they traversed the 48 miles between Mantes and Rouen in 4 hours 10 minutes. They recorded a speed of 15 miles an hour on some of the level roads, and on several occasions touched a maximum of 19 miles. The fact that they were able to ascend gradients of 1 in 10 at a speed of from 6 to 12 miles an hour sufficiently proved the efficiency of the machine.

The same constructors ran another vehicle in this competition of a somewhat similar design, but not adapted for a traction engine; this carried six passengers, and weighed about 3,000 lb. in working order. It was mounted on a rectangular and strongly braced frame, and was furnished with a boiler similar to that already described, but having only some 14 square feet of heating surface, a capacity of about 6 gallons of water, and 18 rows of tubes. The ratio of gearing was 4.06; the small cylinder was 3.54 in. in diameter and the low pressure cylinder 5.51 in., the stroke being 3.94 in. About the same time Messrs. De Dion and Bouton built for one of their clients a carriage in which the driving wheels were entirely independent, each of them being driven direct by a separate steam engine without any intermediate gear.