to any spot highly forced. The land has a perpetual verdure, and the
spring-floods of the river are very gratifying to the land-occupiers,
who have this proverb--

In April, Dove's flood
Is worth a king's good.

It is also said of Dove's banks in spring, that a stick laid down
there over-night shall not be found next morning for grass.

* * * * *

_St. Hellen's Well_, near Rushton Spencer, in Staffordshire, is
remarkable in superstitious history, for some singular qualities. It
sometimes becomes suddenly dry, after a constant discharge of water
for eight or ten years. This happens as well in wet as in dry seasons,
and always at the beginning of May, when the springs are commonly
esteemed highest; and so it usually continues till Martinmas, November
12, following. The people formerly imagined, that when this happened
there would soon follow some stupendous calamity of famine, war, or
some other national disaster, or change. It is said that it grew dry
before the civil war, and again before the beheading of Charles I.;
against the great scarcity of corn in 1670; and in 1679, when the
miscalled Popish plot was discovered; but we do not hear that St.
Hellen's Well withheld its supplies previous to, or upon, the breaking
out of the last calamitous war.

* * * * *

_Prodigious Elm_.--At Field, adjoining Rushton Spencer, grew a