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 No??re, "a Nodderi fluvii ripa",
(hodie Adder-bourn, Na??re}, "serpens, anguis", Saxonic?, 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.
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