Farming of Warwickshire. 489 



to water the adjoining meadows ; an embankment, formed with 

 great ingenuity and judgment, and which must have directed 

 the water over about 70 acres of land, still remains.* 



In the vale of the Tame near Birmingham, something more ha& 

 been done. The brook Aston, which runs round the north and 

 west side of Birmingham, and receives the sewage of that part of 

 the town, was directed from its course many years ago, near its 

 confluence with the Tame, and employed to 'float' 60 acres of 

 meadow ; in the year 1820, a proprietor on the opposite side of 

 the Tame, conducted the water under the river by means of a- 

 wooden trunk, Avhich he constructed at an expense of 900/., and 

 irrigated an additional 60 acres of land, paying 500/. for the right 

 to use the water. By this spirited undertaking a particularly 

 worthless soil of clean gravel, producing only short wiry grass^ 

 scarcely worth the mowing, is made to yield most abundant crops> 

 of grass. The meadows are grazed up to the middle or end of 

 June, then the water turned on for 7 or 10 days, and the grass 

 mown — which in a growing time will be in 7 weeks from the 

 time of removing the cattle. Then comes a great exercise of 

 patience in getting the hay, which, to avoid, a burnt rick, must 

 be made and re-made, long after the period when ordinary grass 

 would be fit to carry. The crop averages two tons per acre, and, 

 though rather coarse, is, with a little ' sweating ' of the rick,^ 

 excellent in quality. If the hay is got off before the aftermath 

 rises, the meadow is again floated for 7 days, and in 8 weeks 

 the second crop, of about one ton per acre, is cut, and the meadow 

 grazed during the autumn months ; then floated, and again in 

 spring. 



The sewage of the south side of Birmingham goes into the Rae 



* The neglect, or rather ahandonment, of irrigation over the greater part of 

 Warwickshire is easily explained, and by the mere mention of a circumstance 

 that ought to have received prime notice in any pliysical description of the 

 county, as it would do at the first sight of any good map of it. Occupying the 

 most central position in the kingdom, it forms, on the north-western side, a plateau 

 of great elevation, the district around Hirmingham being in fact known as the- 

 " watershed of England." Throughout the whole of that extensive portion of the 

 county, reaching to Avithin three miles of Warwick, innumerable petty streams 

 take their oriijiu. ; diverging in every direction towards brooks tributary to rivers 

 that flow into opposite seas. An instance, illustrative of tliis, occurred in 1851, 

 "when the mere alteration of the outlet of a field which was rc-drained fur greater 

 depth, sent the water on its course for the Trent and the Humber, wliich had 

 previously found its way by the Avon and Severn, into the l^ristol Channel T 

 Irrigation 'is only valuable in proportion to the fertilizing matters, mineral or 

 otherwise, which the water has met with and dissolved in its prcri"us course 

 through other soils. The petty streams given birth to in a district of such 

 altitude and character have not yet commenced the imbibing career tliat is to 

 make them vehicles of enricliment to lower-lying pastures. The vestiges of 

 deserted and bygone attempts at irrigation (not uncommon in the neighbourhood) 

 Convey two stories to the eye — one in their construction, another in their aban- 

 donment. The latter is the true one. — C. W. H. 



