Life in Lakes and Rivers. T. Macan T.

      Only a comparatively small portion was surveyed, but this stretch is fraught with interest because it illustrates yet another effect of human interference. It may be remarked here that no south country river of any size is in a ‘natural’ state, and any account of it must dwell at some length on the modifications imposed by man.

      The River Lark was once navigable as far up as Bury St Edmunds, though the last few miles were kept open with difficulty because the gradient was rather steep and the amount of water available was small. Eventually river traffic ceased to pay, and the locks fell into disuse. They are now derelict and the river flows in a bed which, having been widened to take barges, is too large for the volume of water which flows down it. This disproportion is particularly marked in one stretch which is now heavily overgrown with two emergent reeds, Glyceria aquatica, reed poa, and Sparganium erectum, the branched bur-reed. These plants probably established themselves first on beds of silt in shallow water. Their gradual spread would impede the current still more and result in further deposition of silt, and the process has continued and was still active at the time when the survey was made. The dense growth of reeds tended to deflect the current to the side, where it encountered and eroded a soft sandy bank, and so made yet bigger the area in which conditions were suitable for reeds. A stage had been reached where, when the reeds began to grow up early in the summer, above them the river flooded even though there had been no unusual rainfall, and below them a miller was hard put to it to obtain sufficient head of water to drive his mill.

      Beyond this stretch overgrown with reeds there is a stretch overgrown with submerged pondweeds. In parts of it the current is sufficiently strong to keep a gravel bottom clear of silt and the water crowfoot is the dominant plant. Elsewhere the current is sluggish, the bottom is muddy, and the chief plant is usually Potamogeton lucens, the shining pondweed. In some places it is replaced by a community in which Spar-ganium simplex and Sagittaria sagittifolia, the arrowhead, are the dominant species. There was no evident difference in the river to account for these two distinct communities and at first they provided something of a puzzle. But a study of the activities of the human beings interested in the river at length provided the clue, and it was noticed that the bur-reed-arrowhead community was found in those parts where weed-cutting was most frequent.

      Finally the river runs through a stretch of fenland before joining the Ouse, but unfortunately the survey stopped at the head of this stretch. The fenland river offers the extreme example of the lowland course. Left to itself it would follow a tortuous channel beset with marshes and stretches of open water. Changes of course might occur and the stream might split up and lose its identity in a number of small channels as does the Euphrates today. Figure 6 shows the lower part of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and gives a good picture of a lowland course which has hardly been interfered with. In Britain no fenland river is left to itself. The fen soil is valuable for cultivating and the rivers are important as the means whereby the water pumped up out of the fens is got rid of. Vegetation, which would impede the flow of water, is removed and the channels are constantly dredged. Flood-banks are raised on either side, often at some distance from the river’s brim, so that an expansion in width is possible when the river rises above its natural banks. Water left behind by a flood stands for a long period in this land between the river and the flood-bank, and the resulting ‘washes’ are characteristic features of the fenland landscape.

      Most waterways were not created by man, though he has modified some of them considerably, but there is one group that owes its existence to human effort – the canals. The Exeter ship canal was built in the sixteenth century and a few artificial waterways persisting to this day date from even earlier times. But the title of ‘father of inland navigation’ is usually bestowed upon the third Duke of Bridgwater, at whose instigation a canal from Worsley to Manchester was built and opened in 1761. The commercial possibilities of this new means of transport were quickly exploited, and in the next forty years nearly 4,000 miles of canal were put into operation. After about 1800 the activity began to wane as the challenge from rail and road became ever greater. Today some of the canals have disappeared and others, though still containing water, are no longer used.

      Even a used canal is surprisingly rich in animal life and an unused one is highly productive. Canals are almost confined to the lowlands and so their water is usually hard and rich in nutrient salts. There is sufficient flow to keep these replenished; but there is no danger of excessive flow after heavy rainfall of the kind which may wash away so much plant and animal life from the canal-like stretch of a river.

      Furthermore canals link up all the main river systems draining central England. Boycott (1936) writes: ‘And about the middle of last century a snail could start in the Thames at London and travel in uninterrupted water to Norfolk or Leeds or Kendal or Newtown in Montgomery or Hereford or Trowbridge, or by slipping into the upper waters of the Avon in the Vale of Pusey even to Christchurch or Southampton.’