130 ON THE EIVEES EIB AND QUIN. 



The meadow-pasturage in the valley liable to occasional flooding 

 is generally of a much superior quality to the pastures of the 

 higher lands. 



On the rising ground along the river-hanks, and on the flatter 

 lands beyond, drinking-water is seldom obtainable, except from 

 wells about 150 feet in depth, probably at about the level of the 

 river-beds of the Rib and Quin. 



Webb and Coleman, in their ' Flora Hertfordiensis,' state that 

 there are about 460 species of plants found in the Eib and 

 Buntingford district. 



In Halliwell's ' Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,' rib 

 is given as an old East- Anglian word for water-cress; showing that 

 possibly the River Rib is equivalent to the cress-brook or water ; 

 the common water-cress being still common in its waters, as well 

 as in those of the Lea, and in the same work the word quin is given 

 as an old name for the spikenard, and may refer either to Conyza 

 squarrosa, or to the flea-bane, PtiUcaria dysenterica. It is, how- 

 ever, the opinion of many who have made the subject their especial 

 study that rivers are very rarely named after trees or flowers, and 

 although it is very difficult to arrive at a satisfactory derivation of 

 the word Rib, yet quin or quern is an ancient name for a mill, and 

 Quinbury is a place where a mill might well have been in former 

 times. This seems to be a more satisfactory account of the name 

 of the river and place than the former tradition that an Anglo- 

 Saxon queen had a residence there. Rib may possibly be derived 

 from the Saxon verb rippnn, to cut through, or it may be connected 

 with the Xorman rive, a bank, from which our modern word riparian 

 is derived. 



