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MISCELLANEOUS COMMUXICATIOXS AXD XOTICES. 



I. — 0;i ^ Ridge-and-Furroic ' Pasture Land, and a method of 

 levelling it. Bj Chaxdos Wrex Hoskyxs, 



To THE CUAIEMAN OF THE JOURXAL CoMillTTEE. 



The only case in which I have ever known of harm mixed 

 with the good done by the draining-tile has been in that of old 

 dairy pastures lying in ' ridge and furrow.' In most dairying 

 districts there is, as you know, a great deal of such old pas- 

 ture, much too valuable to break up, and which has been lying 

 in that form perhaps for centuries, always ready in a hot sum- 

 rner to burn, upon the ridge, and always swampy at winter 

 time, and a nursery of unwholesome aquatic grasses, in the 

 furrow. The cheese- and-butter-making qualities of such land, 

 in the districts I am speaking of, stand nevertheless so far 

 above any other use it could be applied to, and are so impos- 

 sible to reproduce, that the idea of breaking up is, and with 

 truth, regarded as an insult to the genius loci. Every soil has 

 its native characteristic ; and that of the land I am describing 

 (of the ' clay-farm ' variety) is beyond all question less respon- 

 sive to the plough than to the milk-pail. 



But having been laid down (if so it can be termed) long 

 before the drain-tile was in common use, it is, from its form of 

 surface, stereotyped to perpetual suffering from the alternate evils 

 I have described. And when you come to the attempt to cure 

 the one by drainage, 



" lucidis in Scyllam cupieus vitare Cbarybdim," 



you make the other worse. This is no fanciful 'complaint:' 

 it is literally and experimentally true. And its truth is due to 

 the obvious fact, that by this artificial corduroying of the surface 

 you have put yourself out of nature's court, and out of the benefit 

 of her undeviating laws. In other phrase, you have aUered the 

 balance of percolation and capillary attraction, to which good 

 drainage owes its eflicacy and equality of action. The tenant 

 tells you that his best dairy-piece is spoilt by being laid too dry ! 

 Strange as the words always sound in a wet clay district, they 

 turn out" to be more fully verified every year; and the stiffer 

 the soil, the more true they are likely to be, because in such soil 

 the roots of grasses on the sun-baked ridge have more dilliculty 

 in descending for moisture below the mean level. 



In fact, after drainage, the mean level of the rid gc-and- furrow 



