160 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



ordinary degree. One of the principal proprietors, who held his 

 land, under a long lease, at a rent of 5 per acre, and sub-let this 

 irrigated land at 30 per acre, informed me that it was some 

 times cut seven times in a season. The grass is carried into the 

 city, a distance of two and three miles, for the support of the 

 cows, which supply the city with milk. Different channels or 

 gutters are formed for the admission of the water, so that the 

 whole may be flooded. It is applied generally after every cut 

 ting, where the situation admits of it ; but it is found advisable 

 not to apply it immediately upon the grass being cut, nor before 

 it has obtained some small growth. 



The offensive exhalations from meadows thus treated have 

 been the subject of prosecutions at law, as nuisances to health, 

 by parties who derived no benefit from the operation, and whose 

 sense of smell, therefore, was not, as I. have known in some sim 

 ilar cases, benumbed or bribed by any pecuniary advantage. In 

 the testimony adduced on these occasions, it has been stated that 

 the rent for which some of these meadows are leased in small 

 portions to cow-feeders, varies on an average from 20 to 30 

 per acre. Some of the richest meadows were let, in 1835, at 

 38 per acre ; and in that season of scarce forage, 1826. 

 57, or $285, per acre, were obtained for the same meadows. 

 ii The waste land, called Figgct Whins, containing thirty acres, 

 and ten acres of poor, sandy soil adjoining them, were formed 

 into water meadows, in 1821, at an expense of 1000. The 

 pasture of the Figget Whins, containing thirty acres, used to be 

 let for 40 per year, and that of the ten acres at 60. Now, 

 the same ground, as meadows, lets for 15 or 20 an acre per 

 year, and will probably let for more, as the land becomes more 

 and more enriched ; &quot; that is, land which, before the irrigation, 

 let for about 500 dollars per year, now, under this improvement, 

 yields an annual rent of from 3000 to 4000 dollars. The irriga 

 tion is continued at different times, from the 1st of April to the 

 middle of September. 



The parties interested in defending the use of this water for 

 irrigating these lands maintain that the grass produced in these 

 meadows by this process supports in Edinburgh 3000 cows, and 

 in Leith 600 cows. It is added, &quot;that the parties interested 

 in the lands estimate the compensation which would induce 

 them to discontinue the practice, at 150,000, or $750,000. 



