108 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



the sufficiency of inch-bore pipes for agricultural drainage to be 

 fully demonstrated, both by experience and experiment.&quot; 



5. THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRAINING. The drainage of land is 

 of such vast importance, that, although my remarks on the sub 

 ject have been much extended, I may safely longer claim the 

 in diligence of my reader. It may be safely laid down as an 

 established principle, that, in order to the successful cultivation 

 of the soil, the cultivator must have, as far as it can be acquired, 

 the command of the water by which that soil -is affected. I 

 have already said that wetness may be ascribed to two causes ; 

 the first, arising from what are called permanent springs in the 

 soil, which, of course, are more or less affected by the rain which 

 falls, but whose origin may be sometimes traced to a consid 

 erable distance from the ground, which is covered or saturated 

 by them ; and secondly, from rain falling directly upon the field. 

 The former can be remedied only by cutting off the spring or 

 the channel in which its waters flow. The latter evil can be 

 remedied only by a system of drainage, so frequent and so 

 formed and laid, as to convey the water away in the shortest 

 possible time. I call it an evil ; but, in the main, the rain which 

 falls is, of course, an immense good a great and powerful 

 instrument of vegetation, without which no vegetation could 

 prosper, or even survive. It becomes an evil only when it 

 becomes stagnant. The effects of stagnant water in land are 

 destructive to vegetation ; or rather, under certain conditions, it 

 may even produce a greater luxuriance of vegetation, but the 

 plants produced in a very wet soil are unpalatable, innutritions, 

 and insubstantial. Animals fed upon them always lose condi 

 tion, and the manure of animals so fed is almost worthless. I 

 saw this strikingly illustrated in the magnificent park of the 

 Duke of Bedford, at Woburn Abbey. Here there were many 

 spots where the grass was luxuriant and abundant, on account 

 of their excessive dampness, and which were entirely neglected 

 both by the sheep and the deer ; but wherever these places, once 

 wet, had been thoroughly drained, they became the favorite 

 resorts of the animals, and were fed as closely as possible. I 

 have witnessed similar results in many other cases. 



Water is an element in the food of plants, composing, in some 

 instances, as in the turnip and potato, a large proportion of their 



