32 AUBREY'S NATURAL HISTORY OF WILTSHIRE. 



make a cutt by Wotton Bassett, and that the King himselfe should undertake it, for they must cutt 

 through a hill by Wotton-Basset ; and that in time it might quit cost. As I remember, he told me 

 that forty thousand pounds would doe it 



But I thinke, Jo. Collins sayes in his papers, that the cutt from Ashton-Kains to Charleton may 

 bee made for three thousand pounds. 



[Some of the above facts are more briefly stated by Aubrey in his " Description of North Wilt- 

 shire" (printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart.) They are however sufficiently interesting to be 

 inserted here ; and they clearly shew that, notwithstanding Aubrey's credulity and love of theory, he 

 was fully sensible of the beneficial results to be expected from increased facilities of conveyance 

 and locomotion. On this point indeed he and his friends, Mr. Mathew and Mr. Collins, were 

 more than a century in advance of their contemporaries, for it was not till after the year 1783 that 

 Wiltshire began to profit by the formation of canals. 



Sanctioned by the approval of King Charles the Second, for which, as above stated, he was indebted 

 to Aubrey, Francis Mathew published an explanation of liis project for the junction of the 

 Thames with the Bristol Avon. Tliis work, which advocated similar canals in other parts of the 

 country, bears the following title: "A Mediterranean Passage by water from London to Bristol, 

 and from Lynn to Yarmouth, and so consequently to the city of York, for the great advancement of 

 trade." (Lond. 1670, 4to.) An extract from this scarce volume is transcribed by Aubrey into 

 the Royal Society's MS. of his own work ; and a copy of Mr. Mathew's map, winch illustrated it, 

 is also there inserted. 



The liberality of Sir James Shaen in the purchase of Mathew's papers, and the apathy of the 

 London aldermen, until too late to secure them, are amusingly described. Similar instances of 

 civic meanness are not wanting in the present day ; indeed the indifference of corporate authorities 

 to scientific topics is strikingly illustrated by the fact that the Royal Society has not at present 

 enrolled upon its list of Fellows a single member of the corporation of London ; whereas in Aubrey's 

 time there were no less than three. 



The short canal projected in the seventeenth century to connect the Thames and Avon has never 

 been executed : subsequent speculators having found that the wants and necessities of the country 

 could be better supplied by other and longer lines of water communication. Hence we have the 

 Thames and Severn Canal, from Lechlade to Stroud, commenced in 1783 ; the Kennet and Avon 

 Canal, from Newbury to Bath, begun in 1796 ; and the Wilts and Berks Canal (1801), from 

 Abingdon to a point on the last mentioned canal between Devizes and Bradford. J. B.] 



Mdm. The best and cheapest way of making a canal is by ploughing ; which method ought to 

 be applied for the cheaper making the cutt between the two rivers of Thames and Avon. The 



same way serves for making descents in a garden on the side of a hill. See Castello 



della Current! del Acquo, 4 to ; which may be of use for this undertaking. 



Consider the scheme in Captain Yarrington's book, entitled " England's Improvement," as to the 

 establishing of granaries at severall townes on the Thames and Avon ; e. g. at Lechlade, 

 Cricklade, &c. See also Plin. Nat Hist. lib. vi. c. 11. 



At Funthill Episcopi, liigher towards Hindon, water riseth and makes a streame before a dearth 

 of corne ; that is to say, without raine ; and is commonly look't upon by the neighbourhood as a 

 certain presage of a dearth ; as, for example, the dearness of corne in 1678. 



