Another pamphlet from the same research station• (for Oxford now
deals with farm engineering for the Ministry) concerns the surprising subject of windmills as a source of electrical energy. It seems that a certain disillusionment as to the benefits of " the Grid "—which is distributed with little sense of obligation to the country man—has revived interest in power that is provided for nothing. It is roundly averred that certain types of windwheel are well suited to such a purpose ; but most of us will have some difficulty in believing that the erratic winds can be any rival to cheap fuel. We use the wind hardly at all. We use the water less and less. How many lovely windmills throughout the Fens, whose waters they once lifted and transferred, have lost their sails ? How many old water mills have been-surrendered—of which the splendid Domesday Mill at Wheathampstead in Herts is the latest—and one of the last to go? Do any—at Chippenham or elsewhere—still produce wheatmeal of the old sort ? It is difficult not to believe that some of these wheels might produce electric power and light now that no farmers bring them wheat. Unused power is all about us. Did not Lord Iveagh, in days long before his succession cook meals—as I
saw at the time—by the agency of gas supplied by his farm manure ? It is not unlikely that science, which discovers new forces, may also so improve mechanical apparatus that the old discarded powers may come back into use and rejected dreams come to pass. The harnessing of the tides, as of the wind, is not so remote & contingency after all.
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