The shepherds on the downs are careful observers of these ponds,
because if they run dry they have to take their sheep to a distance or
draw water for them from very deep wells. They maintain that there are on
the downs some dew ponds which have never been known to run dry. Others
which do run dry do so because the bottom is injured by driving sheep into
them and so perforating the bed when the water is shallow, and not from
the failure of the invisible means of supply. There seem to be two sources
whence these ponds draw water, the dew and the fogs. Summer fogs are very
common at night on the high downs, though people who go to bed and get up
at normal hours do not know of them. These fogs are so wet that a man
riding up on to the hills at 4 a.m. may find his clothes wringing wet, and
every tree dripping water, just as during the first week of last November
in London many trees distilled pools of water from the fog, as if it had
been pouring with rain. Such was the case on July 4th, 1901. The fogs will
draw up the hollows towards the ponds, and hang densely round them. Fog
and dew may or may not come together; but generally there is a heavy dew
deposit on the grass when a fog lies on the hills.
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