72 
Trunk Drainage. 
are to be so placed as to secure the required objects ; and if these 
fail, a cast-iron pipe, 2 feet diameter and more than a mile long, 
will be laid to supply water from a higher part of the river. 
In the Upper Valley the purchase of the Navigation was no 
easy matter, owing to tl;e complicated interests and rights con- 
cerned. Some of the Trustees or Commissioners petitioned 
against the Bill, but most of them signed their consent. 
The Midland Railwaij Company have a bridge over the Nene 
near Peterborough, which, having a water-way only one quarter 
the width of the river, may perhaps prove an obstruction to the 
floods ; but the Company refusing to have it rebuilt at their own 
expense, it will consequently remain. 
Upon a petition from tlie Marquis of Exeter, one parish, lying 
several miles off the river, was excluded from the operation of 
tha Act. 
The Corporation of Northampton obtained clauses providing for 
a more speedy cleansing of the navigation in their vicinity, at 
the discretion of certain parties locally interested. 
And now comes the kind of opposition already anticipated by 
the reader, viz., that embodied in the petitions against the mea- 
sure of certain oivners and occupiers between Northampton and 
Peterborough. The witnesses in their evidence averred, that 
although they lose their hay crop every twentieth year, and their 
eddish or aftermath every fourth year, they prefer to keep the 
present floods because of their fertilising effects. They obtain 
by far the largest crops of hay from their lowest meadows ; and 
it is the great floods — dark coloured by holding rich sediment, 
not the small overflowings — which force such abundant yields of 
grass, and spare all manuring. But surely such fine soil as that 
of these meadows may be converted to a more profitable purpose, 
by help of drainage, than merely furnishing sometimes a great 
weight of coarse fodder for the upland farms. That minor por- 
tion of the landowners and their tenants who opposed this im- 
provement will see what drained pastures, and probably also 
truly-irrigated ones, can produce in the shape of meat and in hay 
of the finest quality, with no danger or damage to the property 
or health of the valley. Of course there were millers (although 
the most intelligent oi them were in favour of the Bill) and others 
who came forward to testify to the value of the meadows, the 
indispensableness of the floods, the exceeding salubrity of the 
refreshing inundations, and the injury that would fall upon the 
defenceless water-mills. However, greater and wiser individuals 
outnumbei'ed these complainers, and won laurels in the cause of 
progress. 
Having now completed my task of pointing out the injuries 
inflicted by flooding rivers and imperfect water-courses ; the 
