G4 
Tmnlt Drainage. 
in many important respects, economical considerations, which 
very properly frovern our investment of capital in such improve- 
ments, here dehar our proi^ress. The plan which has been sanc- 
tioned by Parliament proposes to relieve the meadoios from injurious 
inundations, hut not to guarantee them against occasional and limited 
overjioicings in verg tcet seasons; and these, by skilful manage- 
ment, may be made to irrigate and fertilise the land which they 
now make dead and wortldess. The Act authorises the Com- 
missioners to open any navigation or mill gates upon reasonable 
apprehension of a flood, which is an invaluable control. Onlg 
one mill need be demolished, and this will be purchased, and full 
compensation given for the removal. The remaining mills icill he 
undouhtedlg benefited: they Avill have more loater, a more regular 
supphj, and even a somewhat greater fall ; although the whole 
river may be sunk to a much lower level. At present, it is only 
under the most favourable state of the river that the mills are 
worked to their full advantage ; and floods often stop them for 
days together. The navigation in its present state is also a con- 
tinual annoyance and hindrance. These evils will be in a great 
measure removed. Then again, as to an increased fall, we be- 
lieve that, now the wheels stand in their tail-water, 18 inches of 
water above the mill-wheel is found barely sufficient to enable it 
to raise a foot of " dead water " below ; it is clear therefore that, 
if a foot of water be taken away from below the mill, it can not 
only spare a foot above- it (which would leave the " head " rela- 
tively as great as before), but six inches beside; so that (by a 
lowering of the entire stream one foot) it will gain a power equal 
to six inches of water. But while the proposed works will some- 
what increase the power of the mills, it is no less certain that 
a continuance of the present system would at no distant day com- 
pletely destroy that power — the stream now raising its bed by 
the soil brought down in the hill floods, and at a much more 
rapid rate than formerly. 
The new works as regards the mills will mainly consist in lower- 
ing their head-ponds and tail-streams, in enlarging the capacity 
of their overfalls or waste weirs, and improving the flood water- 
courses leading from those weirs. 
We come now to the navigation. From Kislingbury and Chapel 
Brampton to Northampton the works will be for drainage only ; 
but, from Northampton to Peterborough, the navigation also 
forms one of the principal objects of amelioration and sources of 
revenue. The land alone could not have undertaken the enter- 
prise ; and indeed, if the present Act had not been obtained, 
combining the drainage and navigation interest together in one 
common work of improvement, the latter would have fallen into 
the hands of a powerful canal company, against which the land- 
