10 w. wniTAKEK — address: 



■whilst pumping, was only 85 feet in April, 1896, or 14 feet below 

 the river, illustrating the marked effect of pumping, which, how- 

 ever, apparently did not reach very far, as, at the same date, the 

 rest-level at the new Waterworks, about a quarter of a mile south- 

 ward of the old works, and more than that distance from the river, 

 was over 106 feet. On the south the average fall to the river is at 

 the rate of 19 feet a mile. 



I^ow, turning back to the first of these sections, what is the state 

 of affairs ? In a tract of bare Chalk, or of Chalk but thinly covered 

 with surface beds — in other words, in one where rain has a tolerably 

 free access to the Chalk — the underground water falls gradually 

 from the higher ground to the lower, as a general rule at all 

 events ; but here this is not the case, the water-slope throughout 

 falling south-eastwards, and paying little regard to the rise of 

 the ground between the two rivers. 



On looking at a geological map on which the Drift is shown 

 (and no other is of the slightest use in this case) we find that 

 bare Chalk occurs only at the basal part of the valley-slopes, the 

 whole of the rising ground between these narrow outcrops being 

 composed of Drift, which is of fair thickness and largely composed 

 of clayey material. It follows therefore that the rain is greatly 

 hindered from getting into the Chalk over this higher ground, 

 and so there is little local addition to the water in the Chalk, 

 and no cause for local rise in the water-level. Moreover, from the 

 thickness of the Drift the Chalk cannot rise much in level under 

 the hill. 



It seems to me that the widespread capping of fairly thick 

 Drift makes the circumstances different from those of an ordinary 

 Chalk tract with much less Drift. In the present case the water- 

 slope in the Chalk is left with little interference from above, hardly 

 any water coming in that way, so that this water-slope very nearly 

 follows the general dip of the beds or the general slope of the 

 ground, both more or less from north-west to south-east, as perhaps 

 also is the general direction of the main fissures or joint-planes 

 in the Chalk, which are mostly the chief water-carriers. 



This explanation is given only as the best that occurs to me, 

 without any dogmatic assertion of its correctness, and in readiness 

 to accept a better should someone find it. 



I am not going into the controversial question of whether our 

 yield of water is decreasing or not. Every Englishman has an 

 inborn right to complain that things are worse than they were 

 formerly, that is to say, the things that specially affect him ; other 



