500 ECONOMICAL QUESTIONS. CHAP. 



the natural flow of water by the artificial force of steam and the 

 authority of Parliament c . 



But a different feeling oppresses the mind when we see the once 

 clear stream stagnating in marshy flats, polluted with decaying 

 vegetable substances and animal products, and bearing slowly along 

 the floating bodies of dead and dying animals. This may happen 

 in countries not controlled by man. But under his guidance, cloth- 

 mills, paper-mills, bone-mills, tan-pits, and factories of manure, pour 

 their waste or wealth of dyes and chemicals into the river, which 

 is afterwards called upon to supply one element of life to growing 

 towns and prosperous cities. If against the ill effects of this con- 

 temptuous treatment beneficent Nature did not strenuously contend, 

 did not earthy sediments fall by gravity, and organic masses 

 become broken up by minute water scavengers, or dissipated by 

 ' eremacausis/ the race of river-dwelling men must soon perish 

 with cholera or typhus. 



But is it much better in places which, like Oxford, drink the 

 water of their own wells ? The deep bed of gravel which makes 

 the foundation of the higher parts of this city, furnishes clear water 

 at almost every point where a well can be sunk ; and it hardly ever 

 happens that these are dried. Before so many wells were sunk 

 one to almost every house in the more favoured parts of Oxford 

 natural springs of considerable strength discharged the overflow 

 of the never-ceasing supply which, falling in rain or melting in 

 snow, filled the gravel from Summertown to the Quadrangle of 

 Christchurch. 



One of these, still flowing on the western side, and another, 

 formerly discharging on the eastern side, were perhaps the greatest 

 of these springs truly ' Holy Wells ; ' but the edge of the gravel- 

 bed resting on the Oxford clay was everywhere discharging, and 

 still is in many places delivering, feeble supplies of moisture to the 

 pastures, and nourishing rushes, Calfcha palustris, Cardamine pra- 

 tensis, and other damp-loving plants. 



The water so issuing by natural orifices was not pure in the 

 chemical sense; it contained much carbonate and some sulphate 



c The Thames and Severn Canal, authorized by Act of Parliament in 1 783, passing 

 very near to ' Thames-head,' in the thirsty oolitic rocks, has supplied itself by a deep 

 well and powerful pumps which have drained the natural source. 



