"Instead of the luxuriant fields, the groves and gardens of former times, nothing now meets the eye but an arid waste." Many parts of Chaldaea, naturally as productive as any others, are at present pictures of desolation.

Large tracts are covered by unwholesome marshes, producing nothing but enormous reeds; others lie waste and bare, parched up by the fierce heat of the sun, and utterly destitute of water; in some places, as has been already mentioned, sand-drifts accumulate, and threaten to make the whole region a mere portion of the desert.
The great cause of this difference between ancient and modern Chaldaea is the neglect of the water-courses.

Left to themselves, the rivers tend to desert some portions of the alluvium wholly, which then become utterly unproductive; while they spread themselves out over others, which are converted thereby into pestilential swamps.

A well-arranged system of embankments and irrigating canals is necessary in order to develop the natural capabilities of the country, and to derive from the rich soil of this vast alluvium the valuable and varied products which it can be made to furnish.
Among the natural products of the region two stand out as pre-eminently important-the wheat-plant and the date-palm.

[PLATE IV., Fig.