1675 (see Gough’s Topography, vol. ii. p. 366); and in 1687 a series of regulations was compiled “for the good and orderly government and usage of the New Haven and Pier now made near Christchurch, and of the passages made navigable from thence to the city of New Sarum.” (See Hatcher’s History of Salisbury, pp. 460, 497.) The works thus made were afterwards destroyed by a flood, and remained in ruins till 1771.  Some repairs were then executed, but they were inefficient; and the navigation is now given up, except at the mouth of the river; and even there the bar of Christchurch is an insurmountable obstacle except at spring tides.-(Penny Cyclopædia, art.  Wiltshire.) As the Bishop dug the first spitt, or spadeful of earth, and drove the first wheelbarrow, that necessary process was no doubt made a matter of much ceremony.  The laying the “first stone” of an important building has always been an event duly celebrated; and the practice of some distinguished individual “digging the first spitt” of earth has lately been revived with much pomp and parade, in connection with the great railway undertakings of the present age.- J. B.]
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The river Adder riseth about Motcomb, neer Shaftesbury.  In the Legeir booke of Wilton Abbey it is wrott Noþþre, “a Nodderi fluvii ripa”, (hodie Adder-bourn, Naþþre}, “serpens, anguis”, Saxonicè, Addar, in Welsh, signifies a bird.*) This river runnes through the magnificent garden of the Earle of Pembroke at Wilton, and so beyond to Christ Church.  It hath in it a rare fish, called an umber, which are sent from Salisbury to London.  They are about the bignesse of a trowt, but preferred before a trowt This kind of fish is in no other river in England, except the river Humber in Yorkeshire. [The umber is perhaps more generally known as the grayling.  See Chap.  XL Fishes.-J.  B.]

* [Adar is the plural of Aderyn, a bird, and therefore signifies birds.-J.  B.]
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The rivulet that gives the name to Chalke-bourn,† and running through Chalke, rises at a place called Naule, belonging to the farme of Broad Chalke, where are a great many springs that issue out of the chalkie ground.  It makes a kind of lake of the quantity of about three acres.  There are not better trouts (two foot long) in the kingdom of England than here; I was thinking to have made a trout pond of it.  The water of this streame washes well, and is good for brewing.  I did putt in craw-fish, but they would not live here:  the water is too cold for them.  This river water is so acrimonious, that strange horses when they are watered here will snuff and snort, and cannot well drinke of it till they have been for some time used to it.  Methinks this water should bee admirably good for whitening clothes for cloathiers, because it is impregnated so much with nitre, which is abstersive.

† Bourna, fluvius. (Vener.  Bed.  Hist.  Eceles.) As in some counties they say, In such or such a vale or dale; so in South Wilts they say, such or such a bourn:  meaning a valley by such a river.
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