AND THE KEY. K. CHURTON. 207 



LETTER XIIL 



FROM MR. CHURTON TO GILBERT WHITE. 



Williamscot, Banbury, July 31, 1788. 



Dear Sir, 

 You were kind enough in your last letter not to require an 

 immediate answer ; yet I made a discovery about a week ago 

 which I did intend to communicate earlier. Do not be alarmed; 

 it is not the hibernacula of the Hirundines that I have found 

 out, nor even the longitude, though I did indeed meet with a 

 person at Higham Ferrars who told me he had discovered that, 

 and the perpetual motion, and to square the circle. My disco- 

 veries are of a much more humble nature, and what any other 

 travelled gentleman, even if he did not ride a black horse but a 

 pale white one, might have made. In the course of my travels I 

 came to Bourn, a small market town in Lincolnshire. Inqui- 

 ring for curiosities, " You have heard, I dare say," said a de- 

 cent man in the street, " of Bourn well head, a spring that 

 turns three mills in the space of a mile," I think he said, but 

 certainly in the parish. I went to see it ; and I will extract 

 the account of it from my as yet inedited journal. " You 

 might take it at first for a stagnant pool ; but there are no 

 runners (as a man called them) into it, and the water is most 

 clear and beautiful, in extent perhaps 30 yards by 20 ; and 

 one if not two copious streams run out of it (I believe they 

 mostly run into one ; but the streams are divided in some 

 places for the convenience of the town) : yet it is in the midst 

 of a flat country, and I question whether there is any land 

 higher than this as much even as three feet within as many 

 miles. Indeed the sides of the pool are some of them higher 

 than the adjacent land, and seem to have been raised either 

 to give the streams issuing hence the direction wished or 

 greater force, or for both purposes. There are ' trenches,' as 

 they call them, close by, which perhaps surrounded this noble 



