11 OCTOBER 1957, Page 27

Country Life

By IAN NIALL

FLoon water and near-drought don't follow one another quite as closely as the rain cloud seems to follow the sun these days but, in my part of the world, where brows are steep and rock channels change little, one can see the river rising in less than half an hour. Some observers are able to detect the change within minutes and not always when it is actually raining. At one place in particular 1 have noticed, the rocks and the colour of the water are a certain guide. Passing it in a car I often see two moorhens on the grass of the bank. They are never on the water when it is rising. Colour tinges the river as it prepares to flood, for it then carries a considerable amount of peat. Lichen that is grey in the morning darkens as it blots up moisture and one doesn't need to backtrack to the bridge to forecast flood by the mark of water on the masonry. River-wise people claim that the swift rise and fall of the water is com- paratively new and blame an assortment of things from draining schemes to tree cutting. Until recently, I admit, I was inclined to believe this myself. Now I am not so sure. That famous angler of Tweed and other fast-flowing northern waters, W. C. Stewart, of the spider pattern fly, said exactly the same things we arc saying about our rivers, but he was writing nearly a hundred years ago whcn there were no draining ploughs and surely thousands moi-e trees.