Prince Rupert's Drops (Vol. iv., pp. 234. 274.).
—In your reply to the Query respecting these drops, you state that it is not certain in what country they were invented; I may therefore mention that the French call them larmes Bataviques, from the circumstance of their being made in Holland; from whence some were sent to Paris in 1656, to the Swedish minister there, M. Chanut.
PHILIP S. KING.
Deep Well near Bansted Downs (Vol. iv., p. 315.).
—I am well acquainted with the country immediately south of the Bansted Downs, and can give W. S. G. some information about the wells there.
I know no country where there is so great a scarcity of water. The nearest stream is a small branch of the Mole, which has its rise some three miles off, just beyond Merstham (pronounced "Meestrum"). The ponds are very few and shallow, so that the inhabitants have to rely on wells for their water. Wells, however, are an expensive luxury, and appertain only to the better-most dwellings. I know several labourers' cottages distant upwards of a mile from the nearest well or pond; they use what water they catch, and when that is gone, shift as they best can,—most commonly do without. This scarcity of water may be the reason why a district within fifteen miles of London is so thinly populated.
The country is very hilly, and even the valleys are some height above the level of London. Woodmansterne is said to be the highest point in Surrey next to Leith Hill.
Most of the farm-houses and superior cottages have wells, and many of these are of considerable depth. There is one just at the foot of Bansted Downs (and consequently in the valley), which is 120 feet deep. After a dry summer this well is very low, and after a second quite empty. This is about the general depth of the valley wells. There is one in the railway valley, below Chipsted Church, some 100 feet deep; I have never known it dry. Within a stone's throw of this last, the London and Brighton railway runs in a very deep cutting,—I have been told the deepest railway cutting in England,—and great fears were entertained that this deep cutting would drain this and several neighbouring wells. The only way, however, in which the railway affected the wells, was to cut right through one, parts of which may still be seen in the embankment.
It is not always the case that a deep well will drain its shallow neighbours. At the Feathers Inn, at Merstham, is a well cut in the solid chalk, 160 feet deep; this was quite out the other day, while two or three wells not fifty yards off, each thirty feet deep, had plenty of water.
Of course the wells on the hills are much deeper than those in the valleys. At a farm called Wood Place, some three miles from Bansted, is a well 365 feet deep; it is never actually out of water; four pair of hands are needed to raise the bucket.