Rivers in Flood When I hear of the rising of
rivers and the threat of flooding, I think always of one particular scene on the banks of the Wye. This lovely river swells much more quickly than most. It can achieve, say, six feet in an hour or so ; and when this happens in a spring or early summer season it converts nearly every moorhen's nest—and the birds abound, near Hereford, for example—into a boat, and you may see them still holding the eggs scurrying on the current with other flotsam and perhaps a sheep or two. One of the worst sequelee of a flood is the drowning of worms, and they repopulate grassland so slowly that for want of them the grass coarsens permanently in certain hollows ; and what a debt grassland as well as tilth owes to the worm, which both fertilises and drains. Only on lawns and greens are they enemies ; and even there their work has to be done artificially by spiked rollers and top-dressing.
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