52 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
soil, when afterwards ploughed, was found to be in a very workable condition
the texture having apparently been improved by the salt water. As soon as rain
had washed out the salt from the surface soil, however, the condition speedily
deteriorated, and the soil finally became so difficult to work and so hard and
caked in dry weather, that proper aeration and root action were inhibited.3 A
survey made by the speaker in the summer of 1899 showed that while crops did
fairly well on land which had been clean fallowed in 1898, grass seeds sown in
oals in 1898 produced only half a ton of hay in 1899, instead of two to three tons
as should have been the case had there been no inundation.
It is now nearly ten years since this disastrous event occurred, and on the
occasion of this visit of the Essex Field Club it is pleasing to observe that great
progress towards recovery has been made. On the pieces of permanent grass
and crossed by the Club, clover, which was destroyed by salt water, has
reappeared. The texture of the soil seems to have got almost back to its
original condition, partly, perhaps, because worms have again become abundant.
A difference in the cropping is noticeable, for while the effects of the salt water
lasted it was important to cultivate as cheaply as possible, and a good deal of
land was in consequence laid down with lucerne. Both lucerne and other crops
appear to be doing well. But there is one legacy which the flood has bequeathed
to the islanders—weeds. For when the soil was in such a condition that crops
could not grow, the land was left a prey to coltsfoot and to twitch, the latter
being a grass which has always been abundant on the ditch banks of the island
in spite of the brackish water which the ditches contain. From the arable land
the twitch is likely to take years to eradicate.
Later in the afternoon the ladies were invited by Mrs. Hepburn to take tea.
on the lawn of the farm. The new motor-pump was inspected, by which water
is supplied to the farm from an artesian well, 400 feet in depth. The water was
tested by Mr. W. Cole with nitrate of silver for chlorides, and found to contain
sufficient salt to give a strong milkiness, although few of the party could detect
any saline taste on drinking the water as it was pumped up.
After tea, a section of the party made an inspection of Mr. Hepburn's fields,
and with the help of a spade were able to study the character of the soil. The
top soil was found to consist of about 12 inches of loam, below which was fine
sea sand. The composition of the soil as analysed at the County Technical
Laboratories is as follows :—
The most interesting features of this analysis are the poverty of the soil in
available phosphoric acid and its richness in carbonate of lime. No chalk is
risible in the soil—it has certainly never been applied—but its presence in
enormous quantities both in the soil and subsoil was at once made evident by Mr.
3 The scientific explanation of these changes is discussed in a "Report on the Injury
to Agricultural Land on the Coast of Essex by the Inundation of Sea Water on Nov. 29th,
1897," by T. S. Dymond and F. Hughes, published at the County Technical Laboratories,
Chelmsford, Sept., 1899.