Farming of Cambridgeshire. 67 
River, which is an 80-horse power engine, which raises by a water - 
wheel about 40,000 gallons of water per minute, lifting it about 12 feet 
high. 
2. The other engine stands on the banks of the ten miles river, and 
is of similar power. These two engines drain most effectually about 
23,000 acres of fine fen land. One old man about sixty informed me 
that he perfectly recollects, before these engines were erected, that he 
had known this district flooded three times to the depth of from six to 
seven feet. 
3. The steam-engine at Waldersea Fen, before fully described. 
4. One at Bene, or Bageney Fen. 
5. Another at West Fen. 
6. Mepal engine, 80-horse power pump-engine, drains about 13,000 
acres, the tax for which is 3«. 6d. per acre. 
7. Over steam-engine, 12-horse power. 
8. Haddenham 1 i , r ^i, r» 
9 Cottenham r'^ banks oi the Uuse. 
10. Swaffham, on the banks of the Cam. 
It (lid appear to me surprising that in this age of improvement 
5000 acres of fine land should still be left liable to be covered 
with water in any flood — I mean the reservoir or space between 
the banks of the two great rivers, or artificial drains, called the 
Old and New Bedford Rivers. Of course as an upland farmer I 
am entirely unacquainted with the management of fen land, and 
totally ignorant of the difficulties that prevent the accomplishment 
of so desirable an object : but great difficulties I presume there 
must be ; or with the proof before thei*- eyes of the advantages of 
arable crops over the coarse, sour grass now grown on this land, 
the proprietors would long ere now have called science to their 
aid, and by her assistance rendered this a corn-producing district. 
But I have no doubt we shall, ere many years roll over our 
heads, see this made as dry and secure from floods as any of the 
surrounding lands — that is, if in future the prices for grain pro- 
duce should be sufficiently high to stimulate them to do so. I am 
justified in the above observations by the opinion expressed by the 
intelligent registrar of the fen district, Mr. Wells, whose urbanity 
and kindness in freely giving the information I sought on the sub- 
ject of the drainage of the fens, I beg gratefully to acknowledge. 
I rode through the whole of this district in January, with 
a friend. We had a flooded time, and my own farm, as I have 
mentioned, was so wet at the time that I did not move a plough 
for days ; yet I found this fen district so perfectly drained that 
they were ploughing and carting on the land, and claying the soil. 
I saw men at work in holes 7 to 8 feet deep, and only requiring 
the use of a small scoop to throw the water out of the holes occa- 
sionally. In nearly the whole of the low flat portion of the level 
of the fens the soil consists of a deep deposit of vegetable matter, 
F 2 
