Prof. T. Rupert Jones — Intermittent Streams. 149 



about six miles between Lambourn and Sbefford this winter ; and 

 the Winterbourn, a smaller stream, which rises close to the Ford, at 

 Chapel Copse on the Leckhampstead estate, near Chieveley, has 

 also been dry from its source to near Bagnor (nearly four miles), 

 where it joins the Lambourn. 



The Lambourn was dry, as above, in 1854 and 1871, and 

 formerly it had the credit of always having a smaller stream in 

 M'inter than in summer, and thus being less lavish of its water 

 when all the otber rivers were flooding the Kennet. Mr. Walter 

 Money, F.S.A., of Newbury, states that it gets dry usually about 

 Michaelmas, and runs again about February, when abundant trout, 

 good in colour and flavour, go up the stream, which keeps full in 

 the summer. In the " Transactions Newbury District Field Club," 

 vol. i. 1872, p. 147, Mr. Hippisley remarked that the Lambourn 

 was dry at its source on November 15th, 1870, and that it began to 

 run again on Feb. 24th, 1871, and on the 6th April, it flowed over 

 the weir of the fish-pond. In the volume referred to, a photograph 

 illustrates this prettily wooded "Source of the Lambourn." 



The Winterbourn is usually deficient : but after the wet years of 

 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1882, the brook rose and ran freely (according 

 to Mr. W. Fisher, formerly of Winterbourn). After the very wet 

 year of 1879 it was running strong in December, though the rise is 

 usually expected in January or February ; and, if not by that time, 

 it does not appear at all. It flows (he states) about four times in 

 seven years ; and usually dwindles away by the end of July or in 

 August, 



Mr. Horton, of East Ilsley, Berks, states that the little river Pang, 

 ordinarily having its rise in the Chalk near Hampstead-Norris, in 

 very wet winters begins at Hodcot, near West Ilsley (four miles to 

 the N.W.), and forms (as it did in 1882-3) a chain of ponds in its 

 course through East Ilsley, where it comes once in five or six years. 

 These head-waters of the Pang, when running through the fields 

 between Ilsley and Compton, slacken in April, and are lost for about 

 100 yards in fissures of the Chalk underground. Mr. W^. Money 

 adds that, in his "History and Antiquities of the Hundred of 

 Compton," Mr. Hewett mentioned the springs near Ilsley as having 

 been particularly high in 1799, 1809, 1819, and 1839. Another 

 statement, referred to, is that they burst out of the Chalk about once 

 in six years, and "never till the Thames has been thrice flooded." 

 Dr. Plot, in his " Natural History of Oxfordshire, etc.," long ago 

 noticed that when the springs failed, the crops were unusually good. 

 Mr. W. Money says that this was the case in 1884. 



The subject of "intermittent streams" has been treated of by 

 Dr. John Evans, F.E.S., etc., when describing the Bourn at Berk- 

 hampstead, in the "Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural- 

 History Society," vol. ii. (1884), pages Ivii-lix ; and Mr. W. 

 Whitaker has described the Croydon example in the " Memoirs of 

 the Geological Survey," etc., vol. iv. (1872), pages 391, 392; and it 

 is known, from general observation and from careful experiments 



