ON LANDSLIPS. 317 



lime and concrete, which enabled the men to stand upon it,, 

 and then to load the slip-clay adjacent to the culvert, so that 

 this clay could not he shoved out laterally. For this latter 

 purpose I had a little more land bought, and lengthened the 

 culvert about thirty yards at each end. A very strong four- 

 foot barrel culvert, 2 feet 6 inches thick, was then built, to 

 the full length, of roughly dressed stones, most of which 

 passed right through the work, and all set m good lias 

 mortar. 



The culvert was now nearly 140 yards long, and the whole 

 breadth of the valley bottom from slope to slope, and for the 

 140 3^ards in length was then covered with a thickness of 

 about four yards in depth of the lias clay from Ashley Hill 

 cutting, making a sort of level platform across the bottom of 

 the valley over which the bank, forty feet higher, might be 

 tipped without fear later on, after this platform had become 

 consolidated by two years' settlement. There still remained, 

 however, another very weak place in this embankment. The= 

 forty feet of bank above the platform, before the level of the 

 next cutting was attained, had to be made over slippery 

 ground which, it had been proved, could not carry even five 

 feet without slipping very badly. This I decided to remedy 

 by efficient deep drainage; for that side of the valley had 

 all the appearance of being an old natural landslip. A deep 

 drain was therefore started from just above the level of the 

 brook, at the upper end of the long culvert, and carried for- 

 ward just inside the railway fencing, 2 feet 6 inches wide 

 (just wide enough for the men to work in), and with upright 

 sides supported by horizontal planks and short struts. When 

 this drain had attained a depth of full forty feet, a copious 

 spring of water was tapped. Two six-inch pipes were then 

 laid all along the bottom of the drain, and it was, filled up to 

 the top with loose stones, the planks, being withdrawn as the- 



