64 REPORT — 1855. 



suitable heights and distances, and conveying the water by covered aqueducts 

 or pipes to public wells or fountains in convenient situations, from which the 

 inhabitants fetch water as they require it. 



The supply to Rome on this system, is said to have amounted at one time 

 to 50,000,000 cubic feet of water per day, for 1,000,000 of inhabitants, 

 which is upwards of 300 gallons a-day to each person. Some of the water 

 was brought a distance of nearly fifty miles, the works for its conveyance 

 being of the most massive and expensive character. It was largely consumed 

 in public and private baths, in fish-ponds and ornamental waters, as well as 

 in supplying ordinary domestic wants. The abundance of the supply encou- 

 raged the universal habit of bathing, and contributed in many ways to the 

 luxurious indulgence of the inhabitants. " If any person," says Pliny, in 

 writing on the aqueducts for supplying Rome, "shall very attentively con- 

 sider the abundance of water conveyed to the public, for baths, fish-ponds, 

 private houses, fountains, gardens, villas — conducted over arches of consi- 

 derable extent, through mountains, perforated for the purpose, and even 

 valleys filled up, — he will be disposed to acknowledge that nothing was ever 

 more wonderful in the world." With the fall of the Roman empire, how- 

 ever, the disposition or the means for carrying out works on this scale disap- 

 peared, and since then nothing for many centuries appears to have been 

 done, even by the most enterprising cities, beyond that which was absolutely 

 required for pressing and immediate wants. 



The supply of water to London, which till lately has been far in advance 

 of other places, is strongly illustrative of this. As local supplies became 

 exhausted, springs were from time to time brought into the city, as its popu- 

 lation increased and its wants required, and these supplied public wells or 

 fountains, from which the inhabitants fetched the water in vessels as they 

 required it. But it was a constant struggle to maintain a sufficient supply 

 even for this limited use, and no means of artificially forcing water from low 

 levels or conducting it into the interior of the houses was thought of, nor 

 indeed was any large scheme attempted, until the year 1.581, when Peter 

 Morice, a Dutchman, proposed to raise water from the river Thames by 

 means of pumps worked by a water-wheel, to be driven by the force of the 

 current of the river and receding tide through one of the arches of the old 

 London Bridge. This ingenious project was carried into effect in the fol- 

 lowing year, 1582, and was attended with so much success and advantage to 

 the city, that several other arches of the bridge were appropriated to the 

 same purpose. From an account of the works, written by Mr. Beighton, an 

 engineer, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1731, there 

 were at that time three water-wheels employed, which, if they worked con- 

 stantly, would raise about 2,500,000 gallons of water in twenty-four hours. 

 Allowing for the difference of the flow and ebb of the tide, probably nearly 

 two-thirds of this quantity would be raised. These works continued, with some 

 additions and improvements, till the removal of the old London Bridge, about 

 the year 1822, being a period of 240 years from their first establishment. 

 In 1821 there were six water-wheels employed, and the average daily quan- 

 tity of water supplied was estimated at nearly 4,000,000 gallons. 



This was probably the ezrYiGst pumping establishment on a large scale ; but 

 in the beginning of the seventeenth century a much more important scheme, 

 on a different principle, that of gravitation, was proposed, and was, after 

 years of difficulty, great self-denial, and the most praiseworthy perseverance, 

 successfully completed by Sir Hugh Myddelton. 



This proposal was, to convey pure water from the springs of Chadwell and 

 Amwell in Hertfordshire, to the city of London, a distance along the line of 



