A 7' THE WE/R. 
145 
members of the Selborne Society to make their influence felt 
locally, and to do what in them lies to arrest further develop- 
ments in this direction. 
The Editor. 
AT THE WEIR. 
BLOW the bridge the mill-stream turns left towards the 
mill, while the river flows in the opposite direction to 
the weir. Four long two-inch planks piled on the 
bank make a seat of just a comfortable height on which 
to rest. The sun is hot, the seat sheltered from the north-west 
wind by the hedge behind, and there is no shade ; but the sound 
of the falling water on the foam-dashed boulders below the fall 
gives a sense of coolness even in July; the driving spray, too, 
moistens the air. One misses the slow boom of the mill-wheel 
perhaps, but the mill-house is forty or fifty yards off ; there is a 
low range of buildings on this side, and the rush and fall of the 
stream over the weir entirely drowns the sound. 
The weir is not built across the stream in a straight line, but 
in the form of a semi-octagon. This form gives me from my 
plank-seat a more varied view of the fall. The convexity of the 
octagon, if such a term is permissible, is up-stream. The two 
central sides form a very obtuse angle, so obtuse, in fact, as to be 
almost non-existent ; so that although the weir is built as half 
an octagon the shape taken by the falling water is more that of 
half a hexagon. I am sitting precisely in a line with the inner- 
most or central angle, and look almost straight across the line 
of water that shoots over the middle of the weir. On the farther 
side of the stream the water falls towards me at an angle, while 
at my feet the reverse is the case, so that I enjoy every possible 
aspect of the fall except that from immediately below. 
Below the weir the water falls, not into a deep seething pool 
as is sometimes the case, but on to a sloping bed of rough 
tumbled boulders that rear their grey forms amid the cauldron 
of troubled foam. No doubt these are a support to the weir 
itself, but whether they were originally placed there for that 
purpose or have been displaced by the force of the water in 
times of flood and allowed to remain, is uncertain ; they add 
greatly, however, to the picturesqueness of the place. The 
foaming torrent pours over some six or eight yards of this rocky 
bed before it finds itself in the pool below the dam. This 
pool — black, and flecked with a thousand little foam-flakes — 
receives, too, a strong current of water from a pair of massive 
flood-gates above the bridge, and the two streams meeting 
almost at right angles give a slow but steady circular motion to 
the pool, easily discernible by watching the white flecks of foam 
