Warping. 271 



the width of its estuary, make the Humber the only 

 warping river in England, and thus the deposit which 

 the Trent and the Ouse leave at its mouth are not 

 carried out to sea, but can warp the lands for sixty 

 miles along its banks. It has been stated, but of 

 course, equally stoutly disputed, that the fertilizing 

 sediment is composed of the concussion of the fresh 

 water with the salt water animalcules, and that death 

 thus contributes that life to plants on which insects in 

 their turn take such a terrible revenge. It requires a 

 very strong current to keep up a proper specie; of 

 alligation between the sand and clay ; and the con- 

 stant alteration of sluices and inlets, in order to make 

 the warping level, quite rises into the dignity of a 

 science, and is as difficult a problem as can be set in 

 hydrostatics. Certain places can with prosperous tides 

 acquire four or five feet of warp in three years, and 

 years after, when the ground is examined, each tide is 

 found to have left the record of its presence in a layer 

 of about the thickness of a sixpence. A block of 

 such formation is a veritable " black-letter volume," 

 of which every leaf betokens a day or night of silent 

 and solitary toil. Coltsfoot, willow weed, and docks 

 infest the warp the first year, and the feathered and 

 the Whittlesea Mere weed have gradually given place 

 to " the American," whose roots can strike five yards 

 deep. Four feet under-draining at 10 yards apart, 

 with if -inch pipes joined with anti-sand collars, was 

 Mr. Henry Smith's next process, and the plough was 

 taken over it as soon as it could bear horses, and 

 then it was sown with oats and red clover. The latter 

 was mown for fodder, and the newly-warped land has 

 been known to require the scythe three times in a 

 season.* 



* The Drax Abbey herd began with Daisy, a cow by Northumber- 

 land (466), dam by son of Twin Brother to Ben, and Mr. Smith always 

 hired bulls from Warlaby. From Daisy there came in succession Daisy 



