Hau'tliorn and Elder. 57 



out appaventlv receiving the waters of any feeders. 

 In the first half-mile it swells snfflcientlj, if bayed 

 up properly, to drive a mill — as, indeed, many of the 

 springs issuing from these coombes do just below the 

 mouth. In little more than a mile, measuring by its 

 windings, it becomes broad enough to require some 

 effort to leap it, and then deepens into a fair-sized 

 brook. 



The rapidity of the increase is accounted for by 

 the fact that every field it passes whose surface in- 

 clines towards it is a watershed from which an unseen 

 but considerable drainage takes place. When no 

 brook passes through the fields the water stands and 

 soaks downwards, or evaporates slowly : directly a 

 ditch is opened it fills, and the effect of a stream 

 is not only to collect water till then unseen, but to 

 preserve it from evaporation or disappearance into 

 the subsoil. Probably, if it were possible to start an 

 artificial stream in many places, after awhile it would 

 almost keep itself going at times, provided, of course, 

 that the bottom was not porous. Below the mouth 

 of the coombe the water has worn itself a channel 

 quite six feet deep in the chalk — washing out the 

 flints that now lie at the bottom. Hawthorn bushes 

 bend over it, and great briers uncut since their first 

 shoot was put forth ; the elder, too, grows luxuriousl}-, 

 whose white flowers, emitting a rich but sickly odor, 

 the village girls still gather to make elder-water to 

 remove freckles. These bushes hide the deep gully 

 in which the current winds its way — so deep that no 

 cattle can get down to drink. 



A cottage stands on the very edge a little further 

 along ; the residents do not dip their water from the 



