78 AGRICULTURE. 



he thus proceeds : " The eighth prejudice may be the 

 many water-mills, which destroy abundance of gallant land ; 

 turning it to a bog, or to mire, or else to flagg, rush, or 

 mareblabb ; some mills, worth 10Z. or l%l. per annum, 

 destroy land worth 20L, 30Z. r or 40Z. per annum. I knowe 

 it of my own knowledge." Every word of which is as 

 true in the year 1849 as it was in 165 ; and the remedies 

 which he proposes are now even more appropriate and effi- 

 cient, because we are able to substitute steam power for 

 wind and horses, which he contemplated. To prostrate 

 the weirs on all our sluggish streams would be the greatest 

 recovery of " gallant " land which now remains feasible in 

 England. The day of their doom is probably at hand. 

 Most of our water corn- mills are of barbarous structure, 

 inconveniently situated as to roads, and expensive in the 

 maintenance of their weirs, floodgates, banks, and goats. 

 Many on the larger streams lose one-third of their time 

 in winter from excess of water, and those on the smaller 

 the same amount in summer from deficiency. We re- 

 member an instance in which all the mills on the river 

 Soar, in Leicestershire, stood still for six weeks continu- 

 ously on account of flood. Through all the north and 

 centre of England, as well as through considerable por- 

 tions of the west, good engine-coal is delivered at all rail- 

 way stations at from 4s. to 7s. per ton, and 3s. 6d. per ton 

 is not an uncommon price at the pits. These prices will 

 be more effective enemies to the beggarly water-mills, and 

 more powerful friends to the gallant lands, than Walter 

 Blith's denunciations. In a report made by Mr. Josiah 

 Parkes to the President of the Board of Health, we find 

 the following remarks, to which we give our hearty as- 

 sent : 



" The sluggish rivers of the midland and southern coun- 

 ties of England oppose great impediments to land-drain- 

 age, being usually full to the banks, or nearly so, and con- 

 verted into a series of ponds by mill-dams erected at'*a few 



