are often fed by the accumulations of a great area of country, coming to
the surface like water from the orifice of a syphon, and flowing
permanently neither in greater nor less volume with constant force. If
these cease to run the inference is that the old conditions are seriously
disturbed. This has happened so frequently of late that local authorities
would do well to schedule lists of the larger springs and request the
owners or occupiers of the land to inform them from time to time whether
there is a decrease in the flow. Stored water is almost as valuable as
earth in a cycle of deficient rainfall, and the loss of any of our
fountains and springs is a local misfortune not easily remedied.

[1] "Well deckings" are still common festivals in the North. Quite lately
a Scotch loch was dragged with nets to catch a kelpie, and the bottom
sowed with lime. The Church early forbade well worship.

[2] There is one such just above Marston Ferry, near Oxford, on the
Cherwell, and two in a field below Ardington, near Lockinge.




BIRD MIGRATION DOWN THE THAMES


On September 16, 1896, after a period of very stormy wet weather, I saw a
great migration of swallows down the Thames. It was a dark, dripping
evening, and the thick osier bed on Chiswick Eyot was covered with wet
leaf. Between five and six o'clock immense flights of swallows and martins
suddenly appeared above the eyot, arriving, not in hundreds, but in
thousands and tens of thousands. The air was thick with them, and their