ming Seeland. The
proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices
of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and
also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so
vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.

To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly
west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne
near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five
and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and
twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another
vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern
extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne,
receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchatel and
Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in
communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the
eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles
below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river
Thiele, deepened and reconstructed.

The deepening of the bed of the Thiele, the natural outlet of Lake
Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the
lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a
vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields
abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these
three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water
removed--no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million
cubic feet--represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole
plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and
consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village,
Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty
thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding,
malaria-exhaling marsh.

M. H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of the History and Manufacture of
Pottery and Porcelain. By Jennie J. Young. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

"More crockery!" exclaims one aweary of the ceramic craze. "And the
biggest book of all!--the winding-up shower, let us hope," quoth another
non-sympathizer.

This portly octavo, with its four hundred and sixty-four wood-cuts, a
seemingly exhaus