276 
Irrigation and the Storage of Water 
these green spots among the hoar frost at Christmas, or the lambs with their 
mothers folded on tliem hi March. 
As to the cost of forming water meadows, and their returns, 
Mr. Pusey in the same essay (p. 470) wrote : — 
Flat meadows are spreading widely in South Devon. That they pay for 
this function there can be no doubt, costing from 3/. to 4 1. an acre to form, 
and yielding 31. of rent, whereof 21. may be taken as the new value imported 
by the operation. This, for an average rate of profit, is a very high one. In 
single cases it is exceeded. About 2 miles from Exeter there is a small 
property of 156 acres, all but eight of which, that are orchard ground, are 
watered by two moderate brooks. It is let at more than 61. per acre all 
round to different occupiers — three acres, worth naturally 3/. an acre, let at 
10/., and six acres at 8/. an acre. The whole was worth about 21. an acre 
originally, and the portion recently made cost about 31. 12s. per acre to 
form. 
In reference to his own meadows in Berkshire Mr. Pusey 
added : — 
It is mainly these catch meadows which enable me to keep a flock of 550 
ewes, and winter their lambs also, on nearly the same farm upon which my 
predecessor kept 170 ewes with their lambs. There is one test, however, 
often applied by farmers when a person adopts and recommends some 
improvement in farming. They ask, “ Has he gone on with it ? ” I may there- 
fore mention that I have contracted this winter (1849) for 26 acres of 
catch meadows to be made at 3/. 10s., and 30 more at only 21. an acre. 
In Yol. IV. of the Journal, 1st Series (1843) Mr. Pusey 
gave (p. 313) the following particulars of what he had seen in 
West Somerset and North Devon : — 
A hill farmer at Winsford showed me a field so steep that one could not 
climb it without the aid of the hands. It had been rough ground, worth 5s. 
per acre. He had limed it, and allowed his labourers to break it up, and take 
potatoes for two years, after which time they returned it to him with the 
water-gutters traced along the slope, so that, instead of waste at os., he obtained 
almost for nothing a field bearing perpetual grass, worth certainly 40s. an 
acre. Great as the change is, and strange as it appears, the practice is a part 
of everyday farming in this hilly district, and these catch meadows meet you 
at every turn — indeed the word meadow means here only watered land. Mr. 
Blake, of Upton, has brought less than 400 acres, which had not let for 400/., 
to produce him 1,200/. a year chiefly by catch meadows, which he formed out 
of moorland, and lets every year as summering ground to the lowland farmers. 
There are some beautiful catch meadowsat Cutcombe Pass, on very high ground, 
south of Dunster Castle. In Devonshire, too, Mr. Iloare, at Luscombe, near 
Dawlish, has made them from very poor land, on which he turns the water, 
first in the winter to feed, then to mow, and then three times afterwards in 
the summer to feed off the herbage in the course of the year. On one farm at 
King’s Brompton, near Exmoor, the tenant had drained a piece of moorland, 
collected the runnings into a reservoir which Lord Carnarvon had built for him, 
and used the water, which had been poison above, as food for the field below. 
I do not mean that these catch meadows were all made without expense ; but, 
where the land was previously dry, 2/. or 3/. per acre would be a fair estimate 
of the cost. I will only mention one case pointed out to me by a farmer ot 
Winsford as perfectly easy to be carried out upon a neighbouring farm. 
