THE FARMER*S MAGAZINE. 



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low lands on the South -Western Railway were over- 

 spread with water and thousands of floating hay- 

 cocks; at Guildfoid, Chertsey, Woking, and Bat- 

 tersea, the flood was several feet deep ; Windsor and 

 Reading suffered as usual. At Newbury, Sonning, 

 Buighfidd, Oxford, &c., cS:c., many hundreds of acres 

 of meadow were cleared of their hay ; wheat, harletj, and 

 oat crops tvere flattened and spoiled ; and at Banbury, 

 for miles on the eastern side, the country was entirely 

 deluged. Taking the Midland districts, we find that in 

 the winter of 1818, the Avon, Wellnnd, Ouse, Leam, 

 and Soar, all overflowed their banks, committing in- 

 numerable depredations and great inconvenience at 

 Newton, Clifton, Market-Harborough, Daventry, liCi- 

 cester, Coventry, and Leamington. In the following 

 winter, the flood which periodically encompasses a 

 great portion of the Midland Railway rose with un- 

 wonted severity, so that the whole country from the 

 source of the Trent to its junction with the Humber 

 became one vast inland sea, more than 150 miles in 

 length, and occasionallif sjyreading for miles on either 

 side; and on the margin of its smaller tributaries in 

 Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Notting- 

 hamshire, the same inundations were found to spread 

 themselves. In the winter of 1852, the Trent and Soar 

 converted the valleys around Nottingham and Leicester 

 into sheets of water, and parts of the railways at Lough- 

 borough, Crow-mills, and Stamford were carried away. 

 At Birmingham, the river Rea caused an alarming flood, 

 covering the country with water, destroying a great 

 amount of property, and stopping the machinery of 

 various manufactories. The Leen and Erewash, the 

 Derwent, and other streams, also overflowed ; and be- 

 sides the damage done to so many towns by their streets 

 being inundated, the corn sown over large districts was 

 seriously damaged, and hay in the following summer 

 was rendered scarce throughout the Midland counties. 

 In the winters of 1848-9 and 1852, the valley of the 

 Nene, between Northampton and Peterborough, suffered 

 from extraordinary floods ; and again in the summer of 

 1853. In the latter season, too, the Ouse overflowing 

 swept away many sheep, and rendered the hay crops 

 nearly valueless, particularly in the vicinity of Bucking- 

 ham. Manchester, Rochdale, the West -Riding of 

 Yorkshire, between Goole and Selby, and Doncaster, 

 and along the banks of the chief rivers, were localities 

 heavily visited by the floods of those years. Farther 

 north, the valley of the Tyne, the neighbourhood of 

 Darlington, the vale of Pickering, and some other dis- 

 tricts, were inundated. In the Eastern counties the 

 Ouse and Nene periodically deluge broad tracts of 

 meadow, and often arable land ; the Fen Level often 

 greatly suffering from the breaking of its embankments 

 by the excessive hydrostatic pressure of the swollen hill 

 freshes. Then the Essex valleys are in a most deplor- 

 able plight. During the summer floods of 1853, im- 

 mense injury was done there to sheep and lambs, to hay 

 and corn crops. The vicinity of Chelmsford was com- 

 pletely deluged with one wide expanse of water. Many 

 hundreds of acres of hay were destroyed, thousands of 

 hay-cocks floating down the rivers, a hundred per hour 

 passing through Box-mill flood-gate, near Halstead. 



Taking the course of the river through the Yeldhams, 

 the Hedinghamg, and the northern part of Halstead 

 meadows, tlie a^'gregate amount of grass and hay floating 

 down this one stream must have been at least 50 tons. 

 Along the banks of the Stour and Colne, hundreds of 

 acres of meadow were entirely drowned, and hundreds 

 of tons of the transported hay lay embedded in the river, 

 impeding the current and choking up the numerous 

 mill-wheels and flood-gates. Great calamities were ex- 

 perienced in many other localities ; an entire field of 

 flax was floated away near Writlle ; and in Baddow Mead 

 Hundred the damage to the wheat crop was estimated at a 

 sack per acre. Theseitcms, picked up by my ownobserva- 

 tion, or gleaned from newspapers of the period, do not com- 

 prise any thinglike complete details of damage done by half 

 the flooding streams of our country ; and you perceive 

 that the marsh and fen districts situated at various 

 parts of the coast around our island, but chiefly in the 

 Great Level surrounding the Wash, have not been men- 

 tioned at all. In fact, being constructed and conserved 

 upon system, under companies or local acts, with 

 drainage taxes to defray the cost of the works, the Fen 

 rivers do not overflow their margins ; and when a deluge 

 does take place, it is from the failure of some embank- 

 ment or other artificial erection. However, were an 

 action brought against the English streams to recover 

 the value of even what I have enumerated as losses ex- 

 perienced by all the various interests and classes in town 

 and country — manufactuiers, millers, agriculturists, 

 landowners, and the community at large — the sum would 

 amount to an immensely heavy figure. But I have not 

 made out half the strength of the case against these in- 

 continent riveis. There are greater evils than those 

 arising from the occasional or frequent destruction of 

 produce and property by violent inundation. And it is 

 only because we have been for ages accustomed to have 

 our valleys wet with sodden meadows, and spacious dis- 

 tricts of flat arable land cultivated with the very shal- 

 lowest ideas of infiltration and aeration as means of 

 fertility, that we do not hear louder complaints and de- 

 mands than those which are forced out by some unusual 

 deluge. To be sure, we have articles in newspapers and 

 reviews setting forth the damage to property and danger 

 to public health incurred by the present condition of our 

 arterial drainage. The Royal Agricultural Society's 

 county " Reports" notice the necessity for amelioration ; 

 active under-drainers and improving farmers perceive 

 the impossibility of carrying out first-class husbandry 

 without better outlets for the rapidly-increasing amount 

 of water to be discharged. But the reason why there 

 is not a more wide-spread agitation and appeal to the 

 Legislature, may be because the great body of those who 

 directly or indirectly suffer are looking upon amendment 

 as almost hopeless from its cost and from the apathy or 

 conflicting views of different interests concerned. I have 

 not time to illustrate the various kinds of injury perma- 

 nently and perpetually caused by defective brooks and 

 rivers : but take some of them. That the bulk of coarse 

 hay furnished by marginal meadows, without asking any 

 return of manure, does render them of considerable 

 value to the upland farms with which they are commonly 

 associated, is perfectly true ; but it is also the fact that 



