VtKTEJH MEADOWI. 303 



Mode of improving Boggy Land, 



The whole surface of the boggy ground was pared ^f ^r^^l^d? 

 with a breast-plough, and the peaty matter thrown to- by irrigation. * 

 gethcrin ridges, like common high-ploughed land, with 

 a ridge, like a head-ridge, at one end of each set of ridges. 

 Each ridge has a cut or channel for water on the top, and 

 a drain in the furrow or hollow between it and the next 

 ridge. The head-ridge has a larger channel for water on 

 its top, which supplies all the other ridges with water, and 

 this main ridge is itself supplied by its connexion with 

 a larger channel or Teeder, which first conveys the water 

 out of the common brook-course into the meadow. 



The furrow between each head-ridge and the ends of 

 the beds has a larger drain, into which all the channels of 

 drains in the furrows discharge their water, and which is, 

 by this main drain carried into the brook-course again. 

 Thus the water is diverted out of its usual channel, only 

 to float over the surface of the land, and run into that 

 channel again lower down. 



To gQt the water high enough to swim over the surface 

 of any piece of ground, it is generally necessary to make 

 a dam in the original channel, to pen up the water till it 

 rises to the surface, or near it, and convey it along a chan- 

 nel which shall have less fall than the brook, until it can 

 be got out upon the surface. The length of such conduit 

 or drain must therefore depend upon the fall in the lands 

 which lie parallel to the original channel of the water ; 

 and the quantity of land that can be covered with water, 

 depends upon the distance between the proposed new 

 channel and the old ones. 



And, to perform this business in the most methodical 

 manner, it is necessary to new model the surface, other- 

 wise the water (which will always find its level) would lie 

 too deep, or move too slowly over the low places in the 

 ground, and thereby injure the grasses by a redundancy 

 of water, while all the higher parts of the ground would 

 appear like little islands above the surface of the water ; 

 and consequently receive no benefit from such an imper- 

 fect system of irrigation. 



Where these inequalities of surface are large and nume- 

 rous. 



