118 NOTES ON WOODEN WATER-PIPES.
" I see the conducts are made of earthen pipes, which I like farre better than
them of Leade, both for sweetnes and continuance under the ground." p. 85.
From this we may gather that earthenware pipes (which are
no doubt meant by "earthen") were a comparative novelty,
and that wooden pipes were either altogether unknown to
Norden or that he did not consider them worth mention.
I take the following quotation at second-hand from Gilbert
White's Selborne (footnote to Pennant Letter VI.2)
" November 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by
eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface of the earth, except
in several places in Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and covered with
earth, on which the snow continued to lie, whether those drains were full of water
or dry; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground. . . . . . . ."—See
Hale's Hoemostatics, p. 360.
Much information regarding the use of elm-wood pipes by
the New River and other London water companies, their disad-
vantages, and the date of their replacement by iron pipes, may
be found in Matthews's Hydraulia (1830.)
NOTES ON THE PRESENT-DAY USE OF
WOODEN WATER-PIPES.
By E. DICK, Clacton College.
IT may interest readers of Mr. Holmes' paper in the Essex
Naturalist (ante pp. 60-75) to hear that wooden water-
pipes are still largely used in certain country districts of
Switzerland. In my native village, which is situated in the
lower part of the Bernese "Emmenthal," the water is supplied
both by conduits and by pumps that are made of wooden
pipes.
The water which feeds the "running fountains" comes from
a source about 11/2 miles distant. The pipes are exclusively made
of medium-sized unbarked fir-trunks, and from sixteen to twenty
feet long. In order to prevent their splitting, they are bound at
either end by iron bands; iron bands are also driven inside
the aperture. I could not tell how long the pipes last, but I
remember that frequent repairs were necessary.
As it is, of course, not possible to bend the pipes, "water-
chambers," i.e. square pits laid out with bricks or cement and
2 This is really portion of one of Sir William Jardine's notes in his edition of Selborne
1853.—Ed.