Wet Season of 1872 on Steam- Cultivation. 207 



draining. The more immediate cause, however, of the insertion 

 of this question was the interesting fact recorded by Messrs. 

 Lawes and Gilbert on page 115 of their Report of the ' Effects 

 of the Drought of 1870 on some of the Experimental Crops at 

 Rothamsted ' in the Journal for 1871. It is there mentioned 

 ^' that whilst the pipe-drains from every one of the other plots 

 in the experimental wheat-field run frcehj perhaps on the average 

 four or five times annually, the drain from the dunged plot 

 seldom runs at all more than once in a year : indeed, it has not 

 with certainty been known to run, though closely watched, since 

 about this time last year." . . . . " Such a fact as the one here 

 recorded is obviously of great interest and significance. Whether 

 the porosity of a clay soil be increased by the application of 

 manure, by mechanical means, or by a combination of the two, 

 its power to retain and absorb water, without being wet, and in 

 an available state, will be propoxtionally increased, and the 

 necessity for artificial drainage, at any rate on some soils, would 

 be greatly obviated." No instance is given by any corre- 

 spondent of a case similar to the one just quoted, and, so far as 

 this inquiry goes, we fail to find any instance in which a soil 

 has been enabled by mechanical means alone to retain without 

 injury all the rain that falls upon it. The experience already 

 given by Mr. Hobbs from Northumberland is common to other 

 parts of the country, and his remark that " the deeper the culti- 

 vation on undrained land the bigger the sponge for holding the 

 water," probably expresses the whole truth. A large sponge 

 will hold a moderate amount of water without being: saturated. 

 At Rothamsted the application of 14 tons per acre for 29 years 

 has rendered the plot so spongy that it now holds all the rain 

 that falls upon it without being saturated by it, but the same 

 plot would obviously still require the help of drains to carry off 

 the surplus water, if the 25 inches that form the average rainfall 

 at Harpenden were inci-eased till it equalled the average fall in 

 the north or west of England. Only two returns stated that 

 deep cultivation served instead of draining, and each case was 

 so modified on further inquiry as to remove it from the same 

 category as the Rothamsted land. ]\Ir. J. C. Robinson, who 

 has used Howard's roundabout tackle for 14 years on heavv 

 clay land at Stevington, near Bedford, says that if land is culti- 

 vated when dry it will not suffer from want of draining for that 

 year. Dry air let into the subsoil as well as topsoil enables it 

 to absorb all the rain-water except in a very wet season ; but he 

 is careful to add that, though he has observed this several times 

 the last 15 years, he is not indifferent to the great advantages of 

 draining, but considers it the first operation to be performed 

 on all clay soils. 



