MAKUKES AIsD THEIR APPLICATION. 301 



soil is deep and its resources undeveloped, and where, under the 

 ordinary operations of tillage, the weathering of the soil goes on 

 more rapidly than is necessary to supply the demands of agii- 

 culture, such an opinion is quite natural, but it may seem strange 

 that it should be entertained by those who are farming the old 

 worn soils of this country. If we consider, however, the great 

 reforms which have taken place in agriculture during the last 

 forty or fifty years, we shall find that while they have all tended 

 to the more rapid and thorough exhaustion of the riches con- 

 tained in the soil, they have also tended to postpone the time 

 when that exhaustion would become apparent. The most notable 

 of these reforms was the system of ''thorough drainage," intro- 

 duced by Deanston about the year 1835, a system which has had 

 an immense effect upon our agriculture. From small beginnings 

 it rapidly extended, and under the stimulus of the Government 

 loan of 1845 enormous sums of money were expended on deep 

 draining and tile draining, w^hich had then come into use. 



The effect of deep draining is to remove the water in the soil 

 to a lower depth, and thus greatly to increase the area into which 

 the atmosphere can gain access, and carry on the process of 

 weathering which renders the soil fit to be the habitation of the 

 roots of plants. By the adoption of thorough draining the crops 

 on the farm- were enabled to send their roots down to deptlis 

 where formerly they had not been able to penetrate, and thence 

 to draw up stores of nourishment which had hitherto been 

 unavailable ; just as a coalmaster, finding that the seam of coal 

 he has been working is nearly exhausted, digs deeper and finds 

 a lower stratum of accumulated wealth waiting to be developed. 

 The practical effect of drainage is to greatly increase, perhaps to 

 double the area of crop-producing land, and that as certainly as 

 if it had been doubled in superficial extent. The increase of soil 

 in contact with the roots of crops means an increase in the 

 amount of plant-food carried from below upwards, and this 

 causes an increase in the amount of farmyard manure, by which 

 the upper layer of the soil is enriched at the expense of the 

 lower, and the evil day of exhaustion is pushed a few years 

 further back. But exliaustion still goes on ; the land will even- 

 tually become barren ; the new seam will be worked out just 

 as the old one was. Besides the increase in the amount of 

 arable soil vertically, it was found tliat tliorough (hainage 

 enal)led the former also to increase the breadth of his arable 

 land, for by its means thin, ])Oor soils, which formerly would not 

 pay the expense of cultivation, were deepened and fitted for 

 bearing remunerative crops. The system proved to be a great 

 immediate gain both to proprietors and farmers in increasing the 

 value of the land and the amount of its produce. 



Subsoil cultivation was another important step in tlie same 



