Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/357

Rh OPERATIONS.] peculiar to clay, and when tney are treated judiciously, show as good a comparative benefit from draining as other soils. The only instances in which even temporary injury arises from draining is in the case of some peaty and fen lands, which are so loose that they suffer from drought in protracted diy weather. As such lands are usually level and have water-courses near them, this inconvenience admits of an easy remedy by shutting up the main outlets, and then admitting water into the ditches. The drains in this way become ready channels for applying the needed moisture by a kind of subterraneous irrigation. Thorough. The beneficial effects of thorough draining are of a very decisive and striking kind. The removal of stagnant water from a stratum of 4 feet in depth, and the establishing of a free passage for rain water and air from the surface to the level of the drains, speedily effects most important changes in the condition of the soil and subsoil. Plough ing and other tillage operations are performed more easily than before in consequence of a more friable state of the soil. Moderate rains which formerly would have sufficed to arrest these operations do so no longer, and heavy falls of rain cause a much shorter interruption of these labours than they did when the land was in its natural state. Deep tillage, whether by the common or subsoil plough (which formerly did harm), now aids the drainage, and is every way beneficial. Ridges and surface furrows being no longer needed the land can be kept flat, with great benefit to crops and furtherance to field operations. An earlier seed-time and harvest, better crops, a healthier live stock, and an improved style of husbandry, are the usual and well known sequents of judiciously conducted drainage operations. In short, the most experienced and skilful agriculturists now declare with one consent that good drainage is an indispens able preliminary to good cultivation. History. Although it has been reserved to the present times to see land draining reduced to a system based on scientific prin ciples, or very great improvement effected in its details, it is by no means a modern discovery. The Romans were careful to keep their arable lands dry by means of open trenches, and there are even some grounds for surmising that they used covered drains for the same purpose. In dubitable proof exists that they constructed underground channels by means of tubes of burned earthenware ; but it seems more probable that these were designed to cany water to their dwellings, &amp;lt;fcc., than that they were used simply as drains. Recent inquiries and discoveries have also shown that it is at least several centuries, since covered channels of various kinds were in use by British husbandmen for drying their land. It is, at all events, two centuries since Captain Walter Blithe wrote as follows : Blithe. &quot; Superfluous and venomous water which lyeth in the earth and much occasioneth bogginesse, mirinesse, rushes, flags, and other filth, is indeed the chief cause of barrenesse in any land of this nature Drayning is an excellent and chiefest means for their reducement ; and for the depth of such draynes, I cannot possibly bound, because I have not time and opportunity to take in all circumstances And for thy drayning trench, it must be made so deepe that it goe to the bottome of the cold, spewing moyst water, that feeds the flagg and the rush ; for the widenesse of it, use thine owne liberty, but be sure to make it so wide as thou mayest goe to the bottome of it, which must be so low as any moysture lyeth, which moysture usually lyeth tinder the over and second swarth of the earth, in some gravel or sand, or else, where some greater stones are mixt with clay, under which thou must goe halfe one spades graft deepe at least ; yea, suppose this corruption that feeds and nourisheth the rash or flagg should lie a yard or foure foot deepe, to the bottome of it thou must goe, if ever thou wilt drayne it to purpose And for the drayning trench 331 be sure thou indeavour to carry it as neare upon a straight line as possible To the bottome where the spewing spring lyeth thou must goe, and one spades depth or graft beneath, how deep so ever it be, if thou wilt drayne thy land to purpose. I am forced to use repetitions of some things, because of the suitableness of the things to which they are applyed ; as also because of the slownesse of peoples apprehensions of them, as appears by the non-practice of them, the which wherever you see drayning and trenching you shall rarely find few or none of them wrought to the bottome Go to the bottome of the bog, and there make a trench in the sound ground, or else in some old ditch, so low as thou verily conceivest thy selfe assuredly under the level of the spring or spewing water, and then carry up thy trench into thy bogg straight through the middle of it, one foot under that spring ;. . . . but for these common and many trenches, oft times crooked too, that men usually make in their boggy grounds, some one foot, some two, never having respect to the cause or matter that maketh the bogg to take that way, I say away with them as a great piece of folly, lost labour and spoyle After thou has brought a trench to the bottom of the bog, then cut a good substantial trench about thy bog; and when thou hast so done make one work or two just over- thwart it, upivards and dowmvards, all under the matter of the bog. Then thou must take good green faggots, willow, alder, elme, or thorne, and lay in the bottome of thy works, and then take thy turfe thou tookest up in the top of thy trench, and plant upon them with the green sward down wards ; or take great pebbles, stones, or flint stones, and so Jill up the bottome of thy trench about fifteen inches high, and take thy turfe and plant it as aforesaid, being cut very fit for the trench, as it may join close as it is layd downe, and then having covered it all over with earth, and made it even as thy other ground, waite and expect a wonderfull effect through the blessing of God.&quot; These sagacious arguments and instructions were doubt- Elkhij less acted upon by some persons in his own times and since ; but still they had never attained to general adoption, and were ultimately forgotten. Towards the close of last century, Mr Elkington, a Warwickshire farmer, discovered and promulgated a plan of laying dry sloping land that is drowned by the outbursting of springs. When the higher lying portion of such land is porous, rain falling upon it sinks down until it is arrested by clay or other impervious matter, which causes it again to issue at the surface and wet the lower-lying ground. Elkington showed that by cutting a deep drain through the clay, aided when necessary by wells or augur holes, the subjacent bed of sand or gravel in which a body of water is pent up by the clay, as in a vessel, might be tapped, and the water conveyed harmlessly in the covered drain to the nearest ditch or stream. In the circumstances to which it is applicable, and in the hands of skilful drainers, Elkington s plan, by bringing into play the natural drainage furnished by porous strata, is often eminently successful. His system was given to the public in a quarto volume, edited by a Mr John Johnston of Edinburgh, who does not seem to have shared the engineer ing talents of the man whose discoveries he professes to ex pound. During the thirty or forty years subsequent to the publication of this volume, most of the draining that took place was on this system, and an immense capital was expended in such works with very varying results. Things continued in this position until about the year 1823, when the late James Smith of Deanston, having discovered anew Smith those principles of draining so long before indicated by Deans Blithe, proceeded to exemplify them in his own practice, and to expound them to the public in a way that speedily effected a complete revolution in the art of draining, and marked an era in our agricultural progress. Instead of