216 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



clay beyond tn-enty or thirty inches. In 1833, when Mr. Parkes was enojaged 

 in druininfi; a peat-bog near Bolton, in Lancashire, for Mr. Heathcote, he had 

 an opportunity of seeing the great effect produced by deep cuttings, and lie 

 was led to ponder on the advantage that would be derived from relieving the 

 soil of a certain number of inches of the water, wliich is stagnant during a 

 rainy season, and remains until removed by evaporation in a dry season. By 

 experiments continued for several years, he found that a deep drain b-?gan to 

 run after wet weather, not from the water above, but from the water rising 

 from tlie subterranean accumulations below, and that, by drawing away the 

 stagnant moisture from the ttiree or four feet of earth next the surface, it was 

 rendered more friable, easier to work, more penetrable by the rain, which then 

 carried down air and manure, and much warmer and more suitable for the 

 nourishment of the roots of the crops. He came to the conclusion that the 

 shallow draining, advocated by Smith of Deanstyn, was a vital error, and that 

 four feet, which left a sufEeient layer of dry, warm surface earth, after allow- 

 ing for the rise of the moisture by capillary attraction above the water level 

 of the drain, should be the minimum depth. 



The first field drained on the four feet plan was on a farm near Bolton, be- 

 longing to a celebrated Lancashire bone-setter. This was a small beginning 

 of the subterranean net-work of pipes which has more than doubled the value 

 of our retentive soils. In 1843 Mr. Parkes gave his evidence before the Ag- 

 riculturiil Committee of the House of Lords, and was strongly supported by 

 the Earl of Lonsdale, whose experience as a commissioner of highway trusts 

 had proved to him the advantage of the system. But nothing could be done 

 without tools and pipes. A Birmingham manufacturer, on Mr. Parkes" sug- 

 gestion, produced in 184-1 the set of drain-cutting implements which have by 

 degrees been brought to perfection. A cheap conduit was still a difficulty. 

 Stones choked up in many soils, and where they had to be broken and carted 

 to the ground, often made the cost enormous. In 1843, at the Derby show of 

 the Royal Agricultural Society, John Reade, a gardener by trade, a pelf- 

 taught mechanic, well known as the inventor of the stomach-pump, exhibited 

 cylindrical clay pipes, with which he had been in the habit of draining the 

 hot-beds of his master. His mode of constructing them was to wrap a lump 

 of clay round a mandril, and rub it smooth with a piece of flannel. Mr. 

 Parkes showed one of these pipes to Earl Spencer, saying. " My Lord, with 

 this pipe I will drain all England." The Council, on his Lordship's motion, 

 gave John Reade a silver medal for his idea, and in the year following offered 

 a premium for a tile making machine. A great deal of money was wasted 

 in attempts, and many patents were taken out for the purpose with indifferent 

 success; but in 1845, at Shrewsbury, Thomas Scragg received a prize for a 

 machine which triumphed over the difficulties, and pipes can now be made 

 quite as fast as kilns can take them. 



The work from tliat hour went rapidly forward. In 1846 Sir Robert Peel, 

 whose management of his own property had made him thoroughly alive to the 

 national importance of tlie subject, passed the Act by whicli four millions 

 sterling were appropriated towards assisting landowners with loans for drain- 

 ing their land, with leave to repay the advance by instalments extending over 

 twenty-two years. Nearly the whole of the first loan was absorbed by canny 

 Scotch proprietors before Englishmen had made up their minds to take advan- 

 tage of it. But the four millions of government money was small in compar- 

 ison with the sums furnished by private enterprise for the execution of an 

 improvement which, on the worst class of wet land, gave visible proofs of its 

 value by immediate profits. Another circumstance stimulated the work. About 

 the period that the system of deep draining was perfected, the great land- 

 owners were anxious to encourage their tenants, depressed by the approaching 

 free trade in corn, and thorough draining became the most fashionable im- 



{•rovement. The sheepfolding Norfolk rotation fiad done great things for light 

 and, brought the cultivation of roots to a high pitch, and proportionately 



