226 FORESTS, WOODS, AND TREES 
to water. Disastrous floods of the Meavy river are also 
rare, This watershed is an exceptional case, where, without 
any forest cover, most of the rainfall is stored up, and little 
of the water passes away as ‘ run-off.’ 
Mr. J. Paton, Borough Engineer, in a discussion on pure 
water supply held at a meeting of the Institute of Municipal 
and County Engineers in 1911, comparing the gathering 
ground of Plymouth, owned by the Corporation, with that 
of Devonport, not similarly owned, says: “The water supply 
of Plymouth. is not filtered. The source of supply is above 
suspicion, and there is no necessity to filter. The typhoid 
rate for many years has been the lowest in the country. 
Devonport has a gathering ground in another valley, with 
a great deal of peat; and the stream comes through one or 
two very questionable districts, where it might be liable to 
pollution from farm buildings, which the Plymouth supply 
is free from. There they do not filter, as they find it very 
expensive work, because the sand washing amounts to a 
very large sum yearly. Sand filtering does not make them 
any more immune from typhoid or an epidemic than if they 
had left it alone.” 
The Plymouth Waterworks are described by E. Sandeman, 
in Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, vol. 146, pp. 2-42, with map 
(1901); and by F. Howarth, in Proc. Inc. Assoc. Municipal 
and County Engineers, vol. 37, pp. 95-112, with map (1911), 
and in Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, vol. 194, p. 97, with 
map (1914). 
Devonport obtains its water supply, which is now under 
the control of the Plymouth Corporation, from the West 
Dart river (1559 acres) and its tributaries, the Cowsic 
(1524 acres) and Blackabrook (1653 acres) rivers. The 
total catchment area comprises 4716 acres, of which 3297 
acres are above 1500 feet, and 1419 acres lie between 
1000 and 1500 feet. The area is rough moorland grazing, 
without any plantations of trees, and is not owned by the 
Corporation, who have, however, rights under Act of Parlia- 
ment to abstract the water at definite points and divert it. 
