1864. | Agriculture. 657 
water supply for animals; it is even available again in irrigating and 
so in feeding plants upon a lower level. But our outfalls are every 
day becoming more direct and rapid in their action. Rain which 
used to drag sluggishly downwards through meandering streams, runs 
straight out to the sea. Floods, rather the result of this arterial drainage 
than of parallel subsoil drains, follow excessive rainfalls more imme- 
diately than they used to do. And unexpected as it may be, the 
influence of agricultural drainage becomes apparent on our springs, our 
mill-streams, and our rivers. Mr. Bailey Denton therefore urges on the 
Home Secretary that inquiry should be made into this subject before 
this piecemeal drainage of the land shall have injured what he con- 
siders the imperial and general interests of the country, in an annual 
water supply. It is urged that the perennial water supply is, under 
existing management, gradually diminishing; that it is, moreover, 
becoming irregular—floods and droughts more rapidly alternating ; 
that properly conducted, on the other hand, under-drainage is capable 
of securing greater regularity and abundance of the water supply— 
certain districts subject to seasonal drought being capable of supply by 
the storage of the water discharged from drained land during winter 
and spring. And there are other considerations urged why an inquiry 
should at once be directed by the Government into the effect of under- 
drainage on our river systems, and generally into the larger question 
of the water economy of the country. 
We see that the ‘Agricultural Gazette’ calls attention to that 
curious illustration of the natural compensating powers of our climate 
in the case of drought, which it believes the dew-ponds of our chalk 
downs to present. We do not know if exact inquiry has been made by 
any scientific man into the phenomena of the Berkshire dew-pond, but 
the subject seems well worth investigation. Perched on the very 
summit of a chalk down, made an impervious cup, and filled artificially 
in the first instance, it seems to supply so large a quantity of water 
daily to the flock frequenting it, and is at the same time so ex- 
posed to loss by evaporation, that a great increment by a deposit 
of dew upon its surface (possible enough in cases where a moist 
southerly wind, for example, may be slowly passing over a hill top 
during a clear night, when the cooling process by radiation is excessive) 
seems the only possible explanation of the rarity of its entire exhaus- 
tion during the summer months. That, at all events, is the popular 
explanation of the phenomenon, and it is quoted by the ‘ Agricultural 
Gazette’ as an illustration of the compensating powers which, in a dry 
season, our climate must everywhere possess. 
Whatever the difficulties or injury inflicted by a prolonged summer 
drought, it does not appear that they at all weaken or diminish those 
evidences of agricultural energy and prosperity which the exhibitions 
of our great agricultural societies have evinced. The annual meetings 
of the English, Scottish, and Irish National Agricultural Societies 
have been unusually illustrative of our rapid progress in the field. In 
particular, at the Newcastle meeting of the English Society, the efforts 
of implement manufacturers and of stock farmers were well illus- 
trated. ‘“ Agriculture,’ as one reporter has it, “may be said to begin 
