94 ON ENGLISH WATEK MEADOWS. 



adjacent, and filled it up to the level of the water. The stones 

 were then covered with a foot of earth, to which was applied a 

 dressing of hydrate of lime, and finally sown down with Timothy 

 grass. The water was rich in animalcules, and the grass at once 

 responded in repeated cuttings for house soiling. This improve- 

 ment cost at the rate of L.70 an acre, and would not have been 

 undertaken but for its proximity to the farm buildings. The 

 springs in that district are rich in salts of iron and magnesia, 

 and they well up from unknown depths of the trap rock, which 

 underlies the soil in that countryside. 



At Milliken, in the same county, a dry land field was converted 

 into a capital water meadow^ some years since by Mr Glegg, the 

 agent on that and other estates in the vicinity. He diverted a 

 considerable rivulet from its channel, and laid the water on a 

 field which was lying in grass, and which had been sown with 

 rye-grass and red and white clovers a number of years before. 

 Fescue grasses and Yorkshire fog had largely usurped the place 

 of the sown grasses, and the soil itself was of a medium mixed 

 quality, and not specially in want of drainage. The water was 

 carried through a culvert, and the main carrier swept round the 

 field at the flowing-water level. The excavated earth from this 

 carrier w^as banked up on the lower side, and the water passed 

 through the mound in pipe tiles at short intervals, from whence 

 it trickled over the ground -without very much catchwork. En- 

 couraged by success at the very outset, Mv Glegg set about 

 flooding another field from the same burn, the two measurinor 

 some 16 or 18 acres, the whole expenditure very little exceeded 

 one hundred pounds, and the annual cost of management amounts 

 to half-a-crown an acre. The annual produce is about four tons an 

 acre, and the value about 80s. per ton. Mr Glegg estimates the 

 increased value of the irrigated land at ten pounds an acre over 

 the adjoining lands. In order to improve the quality of the hay 

 and augment the crops, he has persevered in sowing Timothy 

 seeds both in May and in August, and it is now the principal 

 grass. He farther says that Timothy is very beneficial, on account 

 of its bulk and the strength of its stems, which support and keep 

 up the other grasses. It has also another very important ad- 

 vantage in being very easily harvested, for even during broken 

 weather there is not much difficulty in getting the hay cured in 

 that moist district of country. The rivulet from which the water 

 is drawn has the advantage of being diluted with the dirty water 

 from a village at no great distance, which partly accounts for 

 the success attained. It is not uninstructive to note that the 

 sediment from a lake in the vicinity of the meadows through 

 which the rivulet passes has little fertilising power— a proof, if 

 proof were wanted, of the unprofitableness of attempting what 

 has been often tried, namely, the utilisation of the solid matter 



