THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



11 



actual trial autl experiincut before ycu cau arrive at any con- 

 clusion, either as to depth or as to distance. Time is a most 

 inipori ant element, and ought not to be forgotteu. Capillary 

 attraction is also most important. I leave it for your decision 

 whether in praas lands the water may not be allowed to ap- 

 proach nearer the surface than iu arable land. I shall be hap- 

 py to learn from many gentlemen whopi I see before me ; for 

 I know that they have had a great deal to do practically with 

 the art of draining. I have endeavoured to lay down certain 

 principles which appear to me to be correct, and without de- 

 taining the meeting longer, I now leave others to enlarge upon 

 the practice of draining (Cheers). 



Mr. Mechi : What is your opinion with respect to dis- 

 tance in the case of stiff clays? 



Mr. Nesbit : I do not believe depth can ever fully com- 

 pensate f)r undue distance. 



Mr. Mechi (of Tiptree) said : It was now ten years since he 

 first began to drain, and he had cut altogether, probably, a hun- 

 dred miles of drains under the advice of Mr. Viall, a well-known 

 agriculturist in Suffolk. As they were no doubt aware, he had 

 at first made his drains 12 feet apart and 2 feet 8 inches deep, 

 and put stone at the bottom (for which his friend Mr. Pain 

 had laughed at him) and the pipes at the top. That was on 

 a very tenacious plastic yellow clay, almost like birdlime, with 

 a great deal of iron, but no lime. Subsequently he had 

 dramed other lands to a considerable extent 4 and 5 feet deep, 

 at intervals varying from 23 to 50 feet, still on the same 

 kind of clay. After ten years' practical experience on that 

 laud, his labourers were now able to form an opinion upon the 

 comparative value of the drainage; and they told him, and be 

 himself believed it from his own observation, that they could 

 always plough easier and work with one or two harrowings 

 less on laud draiued 12 feet apart and 2 feet 8 inches 

 deep, than on land drained four or five feet deep at 

 wider distances. (Hear, hear.) He had taken the trouble 

 to cut across these drains occasionally, for the purpose of 

 noticing the action of the water, and he found that the 

 stones, which were put in iu very small quantities, were per- 

 fectly cle^n, and the pipes were never called upon to 

 take iu any water (a laugh). But, owing to tha ventila- 

 tion cf that soil, or lo some circumstance which he could 

 not perfectly explain, there was an equality iu the crops, and 

 an evenness in the yield, both on the furrows and the other 

 parts of the land, that afforded unmistakeable evidence of 

 thorough drainage. Having^ read Mr. Parkes's paper, and 

 feeling the jeers of some of his Bedfordshire friends, he was, 

 at one time, inclined to think that he had done wrong; 

 but he was now convinced that the distance between the 

 drains was a most important element on these sods. He 

 wished to guard himself to that extent, because he had 

 draiued on other soils of a more friable character six feet 

 deep, and there the drainage had been very different 

 from that on the yellow homogeneous soil, free 

 from lime, but containing a large quantity of iron, which 

 he had mentioned. Tru^, the diaioa^e cost £10 an acre; 

 but even if it were more, it would have been rery profitable 

 to him. Indeed, it had been profitable, a.s it was ; and to 

 this day he believed it was the best drainage he had ever 

 executed — an opinion which was not confined to himself, 

 but was .sliared in by all who had seen it. One subject 

 which Mr. Nesbit, "in his aljle lecture, had not touched 

 upon, was the necessity for having open furrows on these 

 kinds of soils. His (Mr. Mechi'si experience, and that of 

 many others, was that during the winter open furrows were 

 of advantage, and acted occasionally as drains, although 

 the other drains might be running abundantly. In order 

 to test that point, he had left an acre in each field on the 

 flat; the rest being the ordinary furrow, at seven feet apart. 

 Now, he was free to confess that, contrary to his own expec- 

 tations, when the land wasploughed ayearortwoafterwards, 

 he found that, where it had been laid on tiie flat, it was of 

 a more homogeneous and less friable character than where 

 the furrows existed (Hear, hefir). He was there to speak 

 the truth, and not to advance any mere crotchet of his own ; 

 and he did believe that the ventilation of homogeneous 

 soils was a very important matter (Hear). He knew 

 practicalh", as a horticulturist, that, if he wanted to 

 /?row roots or plants on such soils, he must take the ven- 

 tilation or circulation of the air below into account; and 

 he apprehended that the pipes whicli he placed on the 

 top of the stones had produced very beneficial results. 



That fact, then, he commended to the consideration of 

 his friend Mr. Bennett (a laugh). When he drained 

 deeper on other soils, he did so for this reason — that he 

 was a tenant on part of the lan.d. and was not sure how 

 long he might continue to be so : he therefore drained 

 four or five feet down in the strong clays, at inter- 

 vals of thirty, forty, and fifty feet apart. That drainage 

 bad turned out to be very profitable, and the crops were 

 /ery good, though he readily admitted that the land was 

 not in so satisfactory a condition as the land which he had 

 treated on the other method of twelve feet apart, and two 

 feet eight inches deep. With regard to spring drainage, 

 he had certainly some drains twelve feet deep ; and he 

 thought there could be no doubt that, on friable soils, they 

 must cut off the spring at the lowest point, in order to pre- 

 vent the water from rising, and saturating the soil. He 

 would merely observe, in conclusion, that not to drain the 

 strong, tenacious clays, would be a most ruinous thing to 

 British agriculture. 



Mr. R. Baker (of Writtle) congratulated the meeting 

 upon having had the subject treated in so purely scien- 

 tific a manner by Mr. Nesbit. Hitherto, when it had 

 occupied their attention in that room, professional drainers 

 had come there, and not unnaturally advocated the par- 

 ticular systems which they had found best adapted to 

 their own localities; but it had been the object of Mr. 

 Nesbit to instruct them as far as he could scienti- 

 fically, with regard to the principles on which drain- 

 age ought to be applied to various descriptions of soil. 

 Upon all occasions there seemed to have been a great 

 diversity of opinion on this subject. ISome persons lived 

 in districts where there was a retentive soil on the 

 surface, and a porous soil below ; whilst others resided in 

 districts where the porous soil was above and the retentive 

 soil below. Of course, therefore, the process of drainage in 

 these localities would be extremely dissimilar. Nature had 

 so arranged it that in geological strata we constantly found 

 a porous surface with a retentive subsoil, or a retentive 

 surface with a porous subsoil; but neither continued for 

 any great depth without reaching the other. Tlius the 

 order of Nature was preserved, and sufficient moisture was 

 retained for the growth of vegetables for the use of man. 

 Now, the process of drainage must, as Mi-. Nesbit said, vary 

 according to circumstances. Wherever there was a porous 

 subsoil continued from a valley to a hill the water would 

 always be endeavouring to escape upwards ; consequentl v, in 

 all such cases, the system of deep drainage must be pursued, 

 in order to intercept the water at the lowest point before it 

 reached the surface. That was one description of drainage. 

 Another description was that to which Mr. Mechi liad re- 

 ferred. He (Mr. Baker) had had some experience in 

 drainage ; but chiefly upon land where the retentive sub- 

 soil was near the surface, and he found that a certain depth 

 of drainage on a homogeneous clay, at suitable distances — 

 say 5 or 6 yar4s — was the most beneficial. He made his 

 rains 6 yards apart, and 30 inches deep ; and he was 

 engaged on one oi^casion in draining a field according to 

 this system, when the Times Commissioners paid him a 

 visit — their object being apparently rather to condemn than 

 approve of what they saw. When these gentleman entered 

 the field he was draining at a depth of 30 inches. One of 

 them asking him what he was doing. He replied, " Drain- 

 ing." "Oh, dear, no!" was the rejoinder, "you are not 

 draining, nor making an attempt to drain." He (Mr. 

 Baker) ventured to ask, " Why ?" " Because you are not 

 going deep enough. You should put in your drains 4 or 5 

 feet deep, instead of 2^ feet deep." In answer to that, all 

 he (Mr. Baker) said was, that if a hole were sunk in that 

 soil to the depth of 4 or .5 feet, and filled with water, there 

 was not a hydraulic machine in London that would force it 

 into the drain. He then made a drain 3 feet deep, and cut a 

 parallel drain exactly 1 yard from it, but leaving the parallel 

 without any opening except what it possessed from percola- 

 tion. It was filled on Friday night, and on Monday it had 

 only sunk 1 foot, and the water was percolating from the 

 ditch in a manner which convinced him that it had never 

 entered the pores of the subsoil. He then proceeded to drain 

 the remaining portion of this field. The largest part was 

 drained 3 feet deep, with pipes, and filled up in the ordi- 

 nary way. _ Another portion was drained 4 feet deep ; a 

 third portion in that execrable mode which had been so 



