PREFACE.

...to spend only half, or even a third, per lock-full original: "éclusée." The volume of water required to fill a lock chamber once to raise or lower a vessel. of what is usually lost!

We provide a detailed account of the construction of all works pertaining to this subject, as well as those for bridges and highways original: "ponts & chaussées." This refers to the French civil engineering administration responsible for the kingdom's infrastructure., including the specifications that facilitate their execution. This includes plans and profiles for locks, chambers original: "sas." The walled section of a lock where the water level is changed., basins, aqueducts, spillways original: "déversoirs." Structures designed to provide for the controlled release of water from a canal or reservoir., dikes, etc., using as a model the most remarkable features executed for the famous Canal of Languedoc Now known as the Canal du Midi, this 150-mile waterway completed in 1681 was considered the greatest engineering feat of the 17th century. and elsewhere.

It would exceed the proper limits of a Preface to attempt to mention here everything that composes this work; one may form a fair idea of it by browsing the Table of Contents for this volume. From this, one will infer how much the second volume must surpass it still, given the variety of subjects it contains. This method of dividing the material is extremely well-suited to assist the memory; it appeared to us that the Public appreciated it. To reap all the intended fruit, we urge the reading of the cited articles, so as to understand more clearly the matters they are meant to facilitate.

If one carefully considers the purpose of the magnificent works we report as models, and then examines those described in Greek and Roman histories—which one cannot read without astonishment—one will find that ours are at least equal. Indeed, ours may be judged even greater, because they lack the advantages of antiquity The author is addressing a common 18th-century debate: the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns," arguing here that modern French engineering matches or exceeds the technical prowess of Rome., which commands veneration, and because, through a kind of spite, people take pleasure in exaggerating the pro...