One of the earliest to advocate river improvements in Britain was Andrew Yarranton, an original genius, who had ideas and plans quite a hundred years in advance of his times.[32] He occupied himself with many different projects designed to effect improvements in means of communication, and in developing the resources of the country generally. At one time serving as a soldier, at another engaged in the manufacture of iron; now planning how to provide employment for the poor, and again studying how to bring about more economical processes of husbandry, Yarranton made a special hobby of the improvement of navigation, undertaking surveys of the principal rivers in the West of England at his own cost, and urging upon the people the importance of opening up the facilities of communication thereby available to them. In 1665 Yarranton proposed to the burgesses of Droitwich to deepen the small river Salwarp, so as to connect that town, now an important centre of the salt industry, with the river Severn. He was offered terms to carry out his plans, but the offer does not appear to have been good enough.[33] In 1666 Yarranton proposed to make the river Stour navigable between Stourport and Kidderminster, and to connect it with the river Trent by a navigable canal. He carried out this work so far as to make the river navigable from Stourbridge to Kidderminster; but his scheme was not completely adopted for lack of means. He says that he “laid out near 1000_l._,” and “carried down many hundred tons of coal,”[34] although, on account of the novelty of his enterprise, it was greatly ridiculed. At a later date Yarranton proposed to connect the Thames and the Severn by means of an artificial cut, “at the very place where, more than a century after his death, it was actually carried out by modern engineers.”[35] Although the proprietors in what was called the “Old Quay Company” had obtained an Act of Parliament in 1733 for improving by weirs and cuts the rivers Mersey and Irwell, between Runcorn and Manchester, the first association incorporated for making a regular navigable canal in England was not till more than twenty years later, six centuries after the first canals in Italy and Flanders, and a hundred years subsequent to some of the chief canals of France being in operation. It is but fair to add that England carried the movement further than most other countries.