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.] 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. The river Stour hath its source in Sturton Parke, and gives the name [Stourhead.—J. B.] to that ancient seat of the Lord Sturtons. Three of the springs are within the park pale and in Wiltshire; the other three are without the pale in Somersetshire. The fountaines within the parke pale are curbed with pierced cylinders of free stone, like tunnes of chimneys; the diameter of them is eighteen inches. The coate armour of the Lord Sturton is, Sable, a bend or, between six fountaines; which doe allude to these springs. Stour is a British word, and signifies a great water: sc. “dwr” is water; “ysdwr” is a considerable, or great water: “ys”, is “particula augens”. [The Stour rises near the junction of the three counties, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Dorsetshire. Its course is chiefly through the last mentioned county, after leaving which it enters Hampshire, and flows into the South Avon near Christchurch.—J. B.]