88 ox ENGLISH watp:r meadows. 



not, liowever diy tlie ground may be, is held to be a meadow ; 

 but indeed the word meadow, in Hants and the adjacent counties 

 where vahiable meadows predominate, means only watered grass 

 lands. Many of them bear no marks of the plough, and the 

 plants are just what the situation has produced, the sward having 

 been left entirely to nature's charge. Water meadows have long 

 received the attention of English husbandmen. In the Crom- 

 wellian age we find directions for meadow floating, and a Captain 

 Blith describes it in the title page of his book as "one of six 

 pieces of improvement of land;" but we think Columella knew 

 more of water meadows, and saving barndoor toil, as it is quaintly 

 expressed, than our early English writer on agriculture. 



It may be best to give a few descriptive particulars of river 

 meadows first, or what may be called self-flooded mcadov:s, and 

 then the artificiallv-irrigated meadows, concluding with some 

 remarks On the water meadows of Scotland. 



The river meadows Avith which we are best acquainted in 

 England are those on the Thames, the Ouse, and the Kene. They 

 are very generally divided between the adjacent farms in every 

 parish, and supply the principal part of the hay crop. The most 

 serious disadvantage connected with them is their low elevation 

 above the summer stream of the rivers, and the consequent liability 

 to the destruction of the crops, the flooding at best being casual 

 and imcertain. These sluggish rivers, not having a flow of more 

 than a mile in two or three hours, do not indeed, when much 

 swelled by rains, have the sweep and turbulence of a Scotch river 

 when roaring in full flood, and may not plough up and desolate 

 the adjoining haughs, biit a summer spate causes not unfrequently 

 a serious loss. Sometimes the whole crop is swept away, or 

 rendered useless for provender, and more frequently the aftermath 

 is spoiled. The occupier has thus no control in the laying on or 

 the taking off of the water, and low-lying places are frequently 

 supersaturated and submerged for weeks. Those who have not 

 seen the low lands in a flood would scarcely credit the great 

 inland seas that are formed on the occasion. The finest grasses 

 perish by the protracted immersion, and the mire forming a 

 congenial habitat for marsh plants, herbage of a flaggy and sedgy 

 character takes possession of the soil. Farmers with gravelly and 

 porous meadows favour a prolonged inundation, seeing that it 

 rarely fails in yielding a larger crop. 



It is not easy to say how this untoward state of things can be 

 mended, and the evil is becoming aggravated in consequence of 

 the extension of land drainage. The mills, the owners of which 

 stand upon their rights, take up nearly the whole descent of the 

 rivers. The plots of osiers and willows on the banks, not less 

 than the abundant vegetation in the channels, all more or less 

 impede the flow of the river. The intermixture of x)roperties. 



