FEBRUARY'S FAILURE.
One of the most popular. of all phrases connected with the months is " February Filldyke." It means more than it seems to mean. As a rule about Valentine's day, or a little later, the springs begin to rise. The idea is that the long period, when. evaporation has been at its minimum, inimu, has so successfully conserved the rainfall that all the deficiencies of summer arc cumulatively made good ; and the effect first becomes obvious in February. This February is proving so untrue to type that fears of the vanishing of essential springs are entertained. The deep wells have begun to lose water just in that part of the country where some years ago a stream or two completely vanished. There arc upper valleys front which the old brooks have quite disappeared, owing it was thought, locally at any rate, to the artificial water supplies necessary for the towns. The present sinking of the water is not easily accounted for ; and has strangely succeeded a swelling of the streams that amounted almost to a flood. But the whole of the water system at the edge of the Chiltern chalk is rather mysterious ; one mystery is the comparative absence of chalk in the deeper wells. This water is as soft
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