The Express.
London, England, 1853-11-11 00:00:00

ARTERIAL DRALVAGE.

The unwitting rains which have but lately steeped
oar fields, brimmed our brooks, and deluged our valleys,
have ted us to consider more energetically than at any pre-
vious time, whether the general trunk or arterial drainage
.of the kingdom eannot be put into a more perfect condition.
Our chief rivers, burlesquing the Nile and Jordan, nave
bees loodieg ise wide flats of meadow bordering their
sows% sail in every county smaller watercourses have
Waged postues, crops, roads, and towns, destroyed build-
ilneweed sheep, floated away hay, tte. &et., with im-
mense slemege and loss of property. But it is not alone the
leasat-lbeenere, landed proprietors, and other clones whose
eapital is ikeirerra or deteriorated in value, that suffer by the
liability of is much ground to then overfovrings ; sickness
invariably follows upon the lunging of the inundant
waters, so that the health of the entire population is here
concerned. Formerly, the great level and the matiguees
lands were rife in fevers and pestilential raissmata, bat
these, with the dreaded " fen eras," have in great mends
disappeared, and in its general salubrity this district now
compares favourably with the rest of the kingdom. And
experience is other districts tells us that, with a further re-
dunks in the amount of surface evaporation, by mug of
drying and warming the soil to a greater depth, rkill
greater samliontion of climate and additional healthful-
ages would result. How greatly, then, must our sanitary
condition as a nation be injured, how many lives shortened
or emasculated by reason of our frequent floods? If we
could form an murals estimate of the areas of land in
England now mitering from the inability of their main
channels to carry off sudden or protracted downfall, we
should probably be surprised at thier aggregate extent.
Without precise information, we know that our wet valleys
mast occupy a large proportion of the country, because of
the very general character of the late floods, and the ex-
istence of overflowing brooks in every county, and upon
every geological formation. The Nene, in its frequent
swellings, often overspreads 10,000 to 16,000 acres between
Northampton and Peterborough, before it enters the Fens ;
the Ouse probably damages a greater extent, and the
Welland, and ether fen rivers, inundate in a similar
manner. The Severn, the Thames, and innumerable
smaller streams, have each a district of its own in the state
we are referring to, sometimes amounting to some
thousand, of acres, in a situation that we should
have supposed would have freed them nom such incon-
venience. A remedy becomes highly important, when our
beehive population need that every square foot of soil
should, if possible, be wrought to its highest capability of
productiveness. We have seen how the drain water is
drawn off, or if need be, actually bailed out from our low,
lying fen lands; but frona.our inland valleys, far more
fevourably situated, the waters are not conducted ; they
are too often left to feel their own way out, groping cir-
cuitously among all kinds of natural obstructions. And
far worse than this, they are purposely retarded in their
descent by human agency—by dams and weir', by water
wheels and locks—so that for want of a syrematio arterial
arrangement and management of our water courses, en in-
dividual may hold back our drainage to grind his corn, float
his barge, or sometimes even to swell his lake or feed his
fish poad. There is no physical difficulty to present our
clearing, enlarging, and deepening our rivers, so that they
can discharge speedily and safely into the sea the heaviest
rains that clouds can let fall, and the most rapidly oozing
subterranean springs. Engineers can calculate, from the
excess of downfall and spring water over that evaporated,
how great a volume must be provided for in any mama*
and, knowing the fall of the • bed, they can determine
the sectional area of :channel able to emit the flood. But
when we come to the actual performance of the work, we
meet a host of rights and interests conflicting upon the
banks of our stream: mills mentioned in Domesday refuse
to lose their water power ; navigation or canal companies
will not have their " head " in any way lowered; irrigators
of meadows demand our non-interference with their drains
and ,t carriers ;" towns obstinately oppose our alteration of
their strangulating bridges and wharfings; and even a
large portion of than lands we seek to benefit persist in de-
claring their satisfaction with the yreeent state of things,
miserable as it is, and their disbelief in the ultimate profit-
ableness of the expenditure to be incurred. To reconcile op-
posing interests, therefore, there must be either compensa-
tion offered them for injuries and removals, or their liver
may be left to moisten their meadows, turn their mills, de.,
by the drainage being formed independently, and carried
by culverts underneath it ; or, what is still better, the new
works may often be contrived so as to augment the water
power deems of the mills, and benefit all other interests
concerned—a boon, coupled with a proportion of the labour
and charge, thus falling to each. And, of course, all claims
must be filially regulated and appeased by the authority of
a special act of parliament. In tho Vale of Pickering, in
Yorkshire ; in the Test and Anton Valleys, in liampshire ;
and in the valley of the river Nene, we have examples of
such an improvement, either completed or in progress.
Why should not all the many districts of similar cha-
racter abundant over central Englaud, and scattered in
every county, be likewise ameliorated ? Why do not more
of our maritime lowlancts—such as the marshes of 5..1=cr....t
—fulfil their duty to the inland tracts, by perfecting their
river mouths ?—British Quarteriy Revieto.