298 
The Arji-iculiure of Staffordshire. 
In this famous district 105/. per acre is a common price lor land, 
3/. a customary rent, and 47. or 5/. an acre for accommodation 
land. The fall of the river through this reach is 10 feet per mile, 
which is much more than that of the Trent. It occasionally 
proves too rapid for the owners of stock to save their sheep from 
being washed away. It has been noticed at the Tutbury Mills 
that there has never been a flood in June for the last thirty or 
forty years. The period of summer floods is from the 5th to the 
20th July. The crop of hay, therefore, might always be saved 
by shutting up the meadows early in April, so that the crop 
might be cut in the third week in June. 
The soft marly banks of this rapid stream are easily worn by 
the current ; deep holes are made, and the materials deposited at 
the lower bends of the river ; thus the banks have been described 
as swaying to and fro. Filtering* is the simple plan of protec- 
tion. It consists in building a wall from the bottom of the river, 
when it is low, with thorns and weed ; this is done with a flitering- 
hook, and the wall is tied by means of piles driven through it, 
about 6 feet apart. These are bound with wattles and turfed at 
the top, level with the surface of the meadow. The abrupt edges 
of the bank are sloped gently for some yards from the river, and 
the turf replaced. Nothing resists the action of water, in sapping- 
the river banks, so well as grass. 
On the banks of the streams there is a considerable extent of 
meadow-land which is under artificial irrigation, but a good deal 
more might be accomplished by combined action on the part of 
proprietors. About fifty years ago an Act of Parliament was 
obtained by several proprietors to improve the meadows of the 
Penk, before its union with the Trent, by keeping off superfluous 
waters by irrigation ; but this mode of procedure proved compli- 
cated and costly. The Commissioners " improved " about 100 
acres at an expense greater than the value of the land, and the 
scheme failed. There are mills on some of the streams which 
head back the water for many miles, and as the question of com- 
pensation is only a question of the difference in the cost of water 
or steam power, it might be arranged if proprietors could agree, 
and a great improvement would be at once effected. 
Irrigation is perhaps never desirable on the richest pastures, 
nor where the water is poor. I have met with several instances 
of its abandonment from both causes. In the valley of the Dove 
twenty-two acres were turned into water-meadows in 1836, at a 
cost of between Vll. and 13/. an acre for a carrier, about half a 
mile long, flood-banks, draining, &c. The tiles for draining and 
the bricks for culverts amounted to about one-fifth the outlay. 
Flitan , in Saxon, to strive, or contend. 
