rebuilding Lofidon Bridge. 269 



flowing and sapping, through any increased height and velocity 

 of the current ; and, consequently, as the waters will not be 

 allowed to spread in a neighbourhood where land is so valuable, 

 the bed of the Thames in this part must be deepened naturally 

 if the current acquires increased velocity ; and, therefore, the 

 bridges in this part, especially Vauxhall and Westminster 

 Bridges, which do not stand upon piles, must be secured. If 

 proceeding from Fulham and impinging on the shore of Wands- 

 worth and Battersea*, the water should find the soil less 

 resistive than on the opposite bank of the Grove, Chelsea, and 

 Ranelagh, and the banks be not artificially strengthened, the 

 water may take a short cut at some high flood in its course to 

 the sea from Fulham to Nine Elms, and place Battersea in 

 Middlesex. The same principles will apply both to the effects 

 of the flood and ebb tides, from an increased velocity, at the 

 several bendings of the stream, and, without expensive wharf- 

 ings and continual care after the dam is removed, the proprie- 

 tors of lands on the river shores, where there are elbows, may 

 expect sometimes to lose a rood, and sometimes an acre of 

 their lands, together with their sheep and cows. 



The present turbidness of the river, and the frequent shifting 

 of some of the banks and shoals, shew it to be now sometimes 

 at variance with its bed and banks. Hence it is necessary to 

 ascertain the nature of the soil of the bed of the river and of its 

 banks at the several points of sinuation up as high as Tide-end- 

 town, wherever it may be hereafter, whenever there are buildings 

 to be sapped f ; and this inquiry should be made in the survey, 

 which, by an extract from the report of Mr. Telford in the 

 Phil. Mag. of May last, he has requested authority to get made, 

 complaining that no such document exists ; the persons ex- 

 amined before him since 1800 up to this session of parlia- 

 ment, as to the effect likely to be produced by the enlargement 



• The river here is comparatively rough and rapid. The boatmen have 

 a story, that a band of fiddlers at this place were in former times drowned, 

 and that the river has been dancing here ever since. Another band are 

 determined to make the land join in the jig. 



t See Appendix, (A. 23, 3d Report. Lond. Port.,) in which are given 

 the bomings from London to Blackfriars' Bridge, from which it appears 

 that the bed of the river, in that part, is gravel and sand, coarse and fine. 



