890 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK ix. 



constant repair, in order that he may not lose the benefit of a single 

 day. This method of ameliorating land is chiefly practised by the 

 farmers residing on the banks of the Don, Huniber, Ouse, and Trent^ 

 to whom it proves a source of substantial profit. But it might also be 

 successfully adopted on lowlands adjoining rivers, the tides of which 

 are often impregnated with mud. The land thus created, when of suffi- 

 cient depth, is possessed of great fertility. It does not require manure ; 

 it admits of courses of cropping which no other soil could support ; and, 

 by merely keeping the sluices in repair, its productive powers can 

 always be maintained in full vigour. 



We conclude this chapter with the following particulars, supplied byj 

 Mr. T. C. Scholey, Eastoft Grange, Goole, Yorkshire : 



The water of the broad estuary of the Huniber is profusely and 

 uniformly mixed with a peculiar kind of yellowish mud called WARP. 

 Some geologists regard this Warp as the waste of the Till of the 

 Holderness coast. Others consider it to be the river silt " churned " 

 up, and turned back by the tides of the Huniber. 



The Humber drains most of Yorkshire and much of several other 

 counties, and receives incalculable quantities of the soil of these coun- 

 ties, which by the action of the tides is thoroughly mixed and deposited 

 at the bottom and sides, and also in large sand banks in various parts 

 of the area of this river. 



This compound the Humber, by the force of its tides, conveys and 

 reconveys to the lower portion of the Trent and Ouse, and also to the 

 tributaries of the latter, from which thousands of acres of low, and in 

 many instances quite worthless land, lying on the borders or inland, at 

 distances varying from one to seven miles, have been covered one, two, 

 and even three feet thick with Warp and converted into land of average 

 quality and fertility ; and yet, notwithstanding the fact that several 

 thousand acres of such land have been made, requiring millions upon, 

 millions of tons of this deposit for its creation, the waters of these 

 rivers are to all appearance as fully surcharged with Warp as they ever 

 were. 



The soil most frequently improved by Warping is peat, but any 

 inferior land resting contiguous to any of the above-named rivers, and 

 lying sufficiently low to admit of its being flooded to a depth of two to 

 four feet, may be raised and greatly improved by the process. 



In order to carry out these improvements three things are necessary. 

 First : That the land to be improved shall be situated within a suit- 

 able distance of one of the rivers referred to ; secondly, a sluice at the 

 river, to open and shut so as to take in the tides or keep them out at 

 pleasure ; and thirdly, a canal or " warping drain " to convey the water 

 to and from the land to be warped. 



The size of a warping sluice varies from six or eight feet square to 

 twice these dimensions, and the width of the canal from thirty feet 

 upwards. The largest sluice and canal ever made for this purpose is 

 the one by which the principal part of the neighbourhood of Goole was. 

 warped ; the former having two openings, each sixteen feet wide by 

 twenty deep, through which numbers of vessels of nearly one hundred 



