DRAINAGE. 73 



treatises, historical, legal, scientific, and practical, on an 

 art, which, on the present occasion at least, we do not pro- 

 pose to teach. 



Two other cases remain in which water appears as an 

 opponent of agriculture. The first is that in which rain, 

 falling on pervious lands, and filtered through them much 

 to their benefit, reappears in the shape of springs on the 

 surface of lower lands not equally pervious, much to their 

 injury. The second is the case of lands which, from close- 

 ness of texture, are not able to pass down the rain which 

 falls upon them, and can only get rid of the portion which 

 the plants growing on them do not consume, by superficial 

 discharge or by evaporation. The combat with these two 

 cases marks two distinct eras in the history and progress of 

 draining. The first enemy the Romans encountered man- 

 fully, as was their wont. Their remedies were, open and 

 covered drains from three to four feet deep, the latter being 

 half filled with small stones or very clean gravel previous 

 to the return of the earth. In the absence of stones and 

 gravel. " sarmentis, vel stramine subjecto cooperiantur, vel 

 quibuscunque virgultis," branches, straw, or any kind of 

 twigs. They fortified every important outlet with stone- 

 work or other masonry. For non-filtration on tenacious 

 lands they appear to have had no other remedy than clean 

 furrows, water-gripping and open cuts running across the 

 slope of the hill. Their sensibility to the evil of surface- 

 water is shown by the many and minute directions for get- 

 ting rid of it, which are given by all their agricultural 

 writers Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, Pliny, and Pal- 

 laditis. This whole matter is ably treated by Mr. Dickson, 

 in his fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of " Husbandry of 

 the Ancients," where the reader will find an ample reference 

 to all the authorities. 



The earliest notice of English draining which we have 

 discovered, is contained in a broadside in vol. iv. of the 

 Collection of Proclamations, &c.,once belonging to James II., 

 now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, London. 



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