FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 98 



object can be gained by the citation of glaring 

 examples. These are very evident and must 

 occur to a man who even takes a long cycle 

 ride along the banks of a river. In one place, 

 it is an old creek leading to a large pond which 

 has been piled off by a private landowner, and 

 the pond in the rear filled up and done away 

 with. In another, it is the low lying swampy 

 bank that has been artificially raised perhaps 

 four feet by a house proprietor in order to 

 prevent his garden from being annually sub- 

 merged. (You can hardly tell him now that 

 the garden ought never to have been there). 

 In a third it is a long asphalte wall, ten feet 

 high, erected by a speculative builder, in order 

 to turn what was a river side snipe swamp into 

 an eligible building site. 



Thus acre by acre, and year by year, the 

 abstraction goes on under everyone's eyes; just 

 as the abstraction of common land used to, 

 until a river has no reserves at all, and the soil 

 on either side of it is drained and dry from 

 decade to decade. Why, even the flood arches 

 of bridges may be seen let to boat builders, 

 or coal merchants, in many places; who no 

 doubt complain bitterly, and think of compen- 

 sation, should a drop of flood water ever dare 

 to trickle through their premises. The irony 

 of it strikes nobody. 



Leave the Thames, and turn to any and 

 every other river, stream, brook, or ditch in 

 the country. Even look at them from the train 

 window along a railway route familiar to you 



