Girard was charged with the work. The water is taken from the Ourcq, at sixty miles from Paris. In its course, the canal receives the tribute of the Grisette, the Mai, the

Therouanne, and the BeuvronneJ all which streams flow into its channel, which

terminates in a spacious reservoir, near the Barrier de la Villette, This basin is about 3660 feet long, 366 broad, and 7 deep. Its banks are ornamented with a double row of trees.

Two smaller canals flow from it, one to the arsenal, the other to St. Denis. LOAMI BALDWIN, ESQ., an eminent engineer of our own country, who constructed the naval dry docksCharlestown, Mass., and at Norfolk, Va., has from personal at

examination, given this description of the Canal de L Ourcq, and of the quantity and :

annual cost of water supplied to Paris :

" The great and only considerable undertaking for supplying the city is the Ourcq Canal, which has been nearly twenty years in completing. It affords an abundant

* Hydraulia, p. 270. t Hydraulia, p. 273.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 55

supply. The canal begins at the River Ourcq, above 58 miles from Paris, and in its course takes in five or six other streams, or feeders. The trunk of the canal is 36.08 feet (11 metres] wide depth 8.20 feet (2. 50 metres) depth of water 4.92 feet (1.50 metres) and ;

slope of the banks 1.50 base to 1 rise. The velocity of the water is calculated to be nearly thirteen inches a second, and the slope of the Canal about three and a half inches a mile. " It terminates in a From the south-west large basin near the Barriere of Villette. corner opens the St. Martin Canal, communicating with the Seine on the east side of Paris, and a short distance before coming to the basin, the St.