[f. prec. sb.]
1. intr. To build a flume or artificial channel for a watercourse.
1855. H. Clarke, Dict., Flume, waterchannel; millrace; race for gold-washing; stream.
1883. R. F. Burton & Cameron, Gold Coast, II. xvi. 116. Wherever catas, or ‘women’s washings,’ are found, we can profitably apply the hydraulic system of sluicing and fluming not by an upper reservoir only, but also from belew by a force-pump.
2. trans. To convey (or bring in) down a flume.
1875. Miss Bird, Sandwich Isl. (1880), 76–7. The cane is being flumed in with great rapidity, and the factory is working till late at night.
3. (See quot.)
1876. J. D. Whitney in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), IV. 701. These [the rivers] were ‘flumed,’—that is, the water was taken out of the natural channel by means of wooden flumes,—and the accumulations of sand and gravel in the former beds were washed.
Hence Fluming vbl. sb.; in quot. concr. = material composing a flume.
1879. Atcherley, Boërland, 173. The natural beauty of the landscape is marred by the excavations made by the diggers and the unsightly fluming and other erections which continually meet the eye.
