well as broad backs and sinewy arms. Besides the construction of railways there is another class of works on which navvies have of late years been very largely employed—the making, namely, of reservoirs for the water supply of large towns; especially in the north of England with its many densely populated centres of industry is this the case. The natural water supply—the stream flowing from the distant moor, pure and limpid till it reaches the first large village or town upon its banks—is fouled by dyes and sewerage and abominations of every kind, and flows on to be rendered ever more and more foul by every town it passes till it reaches the sea. Meanwhile the dwellers in the towns must seek elsewhere for the supply of pure water, so essential to their life, and often they are driven far-a-field in their search. Perhaps they find at last some distant moorland stream still undefiled, and flowing, probably, down some remote valley innocent of coal, unexplored by any railway, and possessing only a thinly-scattered agricultural population. An Act of Parliament gives them the right to take thence the water that they need. But before they can take it they must store it up in a reservoir, or perhaps, in several reservoirs, constructed on the course of the stream one above another.
I know of one town in Yorkshire where the water supply is being secured by the formation of four such reservoirs, whence it will flow through pipes a distance of some fifteen miles. The probable cost of the work is more than a million, the probable time that it must occupy more than ten years, the probable number of men employed during that time it would be difficult to estimate; and this is but one instance out of many, although no doubt the works in progress are in this case
