and primitive function as arteries of drainage, by the removal of obstructions from whatever cause existing.

It is an old saying, "What is everybody's business is nobody's," and the operations of district drainage are extensive, and seldom come within the power of an individual to effect: hence it too frequently happens that works of great public utility are unattempted, for want of that combination of interest and intensity of purpose, which is necessary to secure general co-operation and ultimate success. It is under the special authority of Parliament only that extensive works of this description can be undertaken; until some general drainage act, to be carried out according to the designs and under the inspection of competent commissioners, be framed and passed, in order to avoid the expense of individual or special application, and to facilitate those improvements of property, which both the science of agriculture and public health so imperatively demand. How many extensive and fertile valleys are there, the drainage of which is confined entirely to sluggish meandering streams upon which, at every few feet of fall, there stands a corn-mill of perhaps only a few horses'-power, the total value of which, in fee simple, is not worth as much as the amount of the damage which is occasionally done by a single flood, letting alone the permanent injury which is occasioned by the damming up of the outfall, in preventing the proper drainage of the surrounding land; and if even the outfall of the drains were, in certain cases, proposed to be carried below the milldams, it would, in many instances, require the co-operation, possibly, of several proprietors to effect it. Let any one travel from the Tyne to the Bristol Channel, down the rich red sandstone valleys, and observe the condition of the streams as to drainage, and he will have scope enough for his imagination in depicting the benefits which would result if all the mill-dams and artificial obstructions were removed, and the waters were allowed to regain the level of their natural outfall.

The district which has been the scene of the operations of the Rye and Derwent Drainage Commission, the proceedings of which I am about to detail, is one amongst many hundreds, where all the evils of obstructed outfall were demonstrable, and yet where all the benefits of improved drainage were, to a great extent, attainable, simply by the removal of artificial obstructions, such as dams, locks, waths, &c., from its rivers; and it offers so good an instance of both the requirements and the benefits of District Drainage, that I shall be excused offering such a description of the locality, as may enable others to judge and compare whether the operations of this Commission may be applicable to other districts in which they may be interested.

In the North Riding of Yorkshire is the valley, or rather wide

level, called the Vale of Pickering, in length about 25 miles and in breadth about 8 miles, and containing an area of not less than 160 square miles.* It consists of a clay vale formation, technically called the "Kimmeridge clay." Its general structure is a thin alluvial covering, and a variable thickness of diluvial pebbles and clay upon a bed of thick blue clay. It is bounded on the north by the Yorkshire Moorlands, the basis of which is oolite limestone, dipping to the south, and upon which the clay vale formation lies, and on the south by the Yorkshire wolds of chalk, under which the valley clay runs, and towards the west by the Howardian hills of oolite, These ranges of hills meet together, or nearly so, at the east end, near Filey on the coast; and at the west end, near Helmsley, the hills also meet together and equally close the valley in that direction. The only outlet for the drainage of this wide plain is at Malton, on its south side, and nearly equidistant from its extremities, and, fortunately, towards this point the substratum of clay, which forms the basis of the valley from the north, east, and west, somewhat inclines in a basin form. The natural drainage is carried on by the rivers Rye and Derwent, which both arise at the summit of the moorlands, at the opposite ends of the valley, and run a course of not less than 40 miles, each receiving many large tributary streams, descending from the moorland dales, which open into the main valley. About three miles above Malton, very nearly in the centre of the vale, the Rye and Old Derwent unite and become one river; the Derwent, which runs in a south-west direction, and, passing through a ravine of dislocation through the oolite rocks at Kirkham, gains the vale of York, discharging its waters into the Ouse, meeting the tide-water of the Humber at a distance of about 27 miles below Malton, The general level of the valley is about 60 feet above the sea, and the lowest level at Yeddingham Bridge only about 35 feet; and were this valley at Kirkham closed up, the vale of Pickering would become, what there is little doubt it once was, an extensive lake, discharging its water into the sea at Filey.

The artificial obstructions placed upon these rivers were as follows:-At New Malton, on the Derwent, was a mill mentioned in Doomsday Book; another at Old Malton, a mile higher

The annexed plan is only intended to represent generally the geological formation of the district-the topography and the number and extent of the rivers and streams; it was desirable also to have represented the contour lines of the land actually flooded and injured; but it was found impossible, on so small a scale, to reduce the boundaries of the assessed lands-they must therefore be imagined to occupy a narrow space spreading generally along the margins of the rivers and streams, extending to the level of 4 feet above the highest flood marks, and in several places, particularly at the confluences of the streams, forming basins of considerable extent,

up the river, dating from about a century later, the two possessing, at the time the dams were removed, a fall of 11 feet. Subsequent demands for water-power had multiplied the number of the mills of one sort or another at Malton drawing their water-power from the same head, to six, computed to possess a power equal to that of about 85 horses. In the reign of Queen Anne, the Derwent was made navigable up to Malton, and, in the beginning of this century, the navigation was extended from Malton to Yeddingham on the Old Derwent, by the erection of locks, &c., at New and Old Malton, which enabled barges of 4 feet draught to go up a distance of about 11 miles towards the east end of the vale. On the river Rye at Newsham (which is distant from Malton by the river above 9 miles) was a mill with a fall of about 6 feet, and the power used at this mill was computed at about that of 10 horses, although there was much water that ran to waste.

Such were the obstructions which the wants of former ages, and the necessities of different circumstances, caused to be raised upon these rivers which were then, as now, the only means of drainage of this extensive vale; and it is to be remarked that they principally existed at the worst possible point, where the united river passed as it were the basin of the lake, and entered into the ravine through which all its waters had to flow over a limited and rocky bed. Thus art, for the possession of about seventy-horse power, had erected obstructions upon the river at the point where a beneficent Nature had, in ages long since past, by internal dislocation or external denudation, opened a passage for the discharge of the waters of this primæval lake, leaving a rich alluvium which only requires that art should assist, and not obstruct, the operations of nature, to be-or, perhaps, it may be said already is one of the most beautiful and fertile vales in England.

This is an instance where the first and great object of attainment obviously was the removal of the dams, locks, and waths or fords, and the straightening of crooked parts of the rivers, and particularly widening the embouchures of the several streams at their junctions with the main rivers; so that the waters might be brought down from the distant moorlands, and passed out of the valley through the ravine at Malton with such rapidity, that in ordinary floods, particularly those of summer, the water may be cleared out of the district before it has had time to pond back; and in the case where the rain has fallen partially, at either the west or the eastern district of the vale, the flood-water of one river have passed the junction before that of the other has come down. Public attention had frequently been called to the subject of draining this vale. In the year 1800 an Act was obtained for draining its eastern end as far as Yeddingham Bridge, called the

Muston Drainage District. This was effected by turning a portion of the flood-water by a sluice and a new cut, from the upper third of the River Derwent directly into the sea, and by a new river or drain from Muston to Yeddingham, draining an area of about 12,000 acres. Several proposals had been made to drain the western and mid portions of the valley from Hovingham and Nunnington to Pickering and Yeddingham, but it was not until the year 1845 that sufficient unanimity could be obtained to take any decided steps for the attainment of this great object. However, in the following year application was made to Parliament, and an Act obtained which incorporated fifty-three parishes and townships in the North and East Ridings into a drainage district, and appointed about seventy Commissioners, who were all either landed proprietors or their agents, with powers to purchase and remove the mills, mill-dams, locks, shoals, &c., and to assess the lands benefited according to the benefit received, or that might be received, in a sum of money not to exceed 30,0007.

I shall take leave, in rather minute detail, to give an account of the proceedings of the Commissioners, even at the risk, I fear, of being considered tedious, but in the hope that they may afford some clue for the guidance of others.

In consequence of the heavy rains and of the floods thereby occasioned on the lands adjoining the Rivers Rye and Derwent, and the great injury done thereby to the growing crops in 1845, I was induced for the third time in the course of twenty years, with the approbation of Lord Carlisle, under whose auspices I have acted in any interest I took in carrying out the drainage, to try whether the obstructions in these rivers, caused by three milldams (namely, one at New Malton, one at Old Malton, and that at Newsham), might not be removed. My first step was to press Lord Fitzwilliam's agent (Mr. Allen) into the service. He, Lord Carlisle's solicitor, and myself, waited upon a few of the largest proprietors of land embraced in the scheme, who, with very few exceptions, came cordially into the measure we proposed to take, viz., to convene (by issuing circulars) a meeting of all the proprietors of land in the district. Paper 1, with others given in the Appendix, is a copy of the circular, and Paper 2 the result of the meeting. In the Session of 1846, the Act termed The Rye and Derwent Drainage Act' was obtained. Among the first steps taken by the Commissioners under the Act was a resolution to advertise for a surveyor or surveyors, to survey, level, and map the whole of the lands which they considered would fall within the limits of the Act. Paper No. 3 is a copy of the specification, &c. &c. The next important step was the appointment of two valuers, with an umpire, into whose hands of course the plans and books of reference were placed, and they