64 ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES. 



John Street Road to the Bagnigge Wells Road were really fields devoted to 

 the pasturage of cows, and to a forest of elm trees ; not standing and adorned 

 with foliage in the summer, but lying on the ground to the southward of the 

 new river Head, being destined to convey water in their hollow trunks to the 

 northern and western parts of London in combination M'ith similar pipes laid 

 under the roadways of the streets." 



I am also indebted to the kindness of Mr. C. F. Marsh, of 

 the East London Water Company, for the information that cast 

 iron pipes were first laid down by that company about the year 

 1808, though wooden pipes were probably used several years 

 after that date, when channels of the smaller sizes were required. 

 He adds that the use of bored wooden pipes has been recently 

 revived in parts of the United States where timber is cheap. 

 They are somewhat less rudely made than the older specimens, 

 and are surrounded by spiral bands of steel. 



The subterranean position usually occupied by these water- 

 pipes has almost entirely prevented them being shown in 

 pictures and engravings of the periods during which they were 

 used. My son Walter, however, has reminded me that a 

 wooden water-pipe appears in Hogarth's picture " Evening " 



(1738). 



Nor are they common (so far as I know) in museums. There 

 is one in the Guildhall Museum, among the other local 

 antiquities there, described as an " Ancient Water-Pipe for 

 supplying the City Conduits." It is between five and six feet 

 long. And the late Frank Buckland mentions one in the 

 Museum at Oxford (Curiosities of Natural History 2nd Ser. 

 Chap. I.) in the following terms : — 



" In the same Museum is suspended against the wall what at first sight 

 appears to be a wooden pipe, but upon examination it will be seen to be not a 

 wooden, but a stone one ; it is a stone pipe formed within a wooden one. The 

 original pipe, about four inches square, belonged to the old conduit at Carfax in 

 Oxford ; in process of time the carbonate of lime had formed equally on all four 

 sides of the pipe to the thickness of about a quarter of an inch. When taken up 

 the woodwork was found to be quite decayed, but nevertheless it did not leak, as 

 there was another pipe within it, firmer, more solid, and more lasting than the 

 wooden one, through which the water flowed ; this second pipe is of stone, 

 naturally formed within the first. On examining our stone specimen we find that 

 the inside is smooth, but the outside, on the contrary, is quite rough preserving 

 accurately the lines of the rough fibre of the oak from Mhich the wooden pipe 

 was made, and in one place a mark, very like a saw mark, can be traced." 



Doubtless a similar deposit has preserved the efficiency of 



