DRAINAGE. 81 



In England the two cases of injury from water which has 

 passed through the earth, and water which has not, are 

 very frequently complicated, and run into one another by 

 an almost insensible gradation. Except in very barbarous 

 and some sub-alpine districts, the era of draining for mere 

 springs has passed by, and the work has on the whole been 

 well executed. We possess better materials for forming a 

 conduit, and some better tools, but probably no other ad- 

 vantage over old Elkington.* We know very little beyond 

 what he taught us, and perhaps do not require to know more. 

 Joseph Elkington was a man of considerable genius, but he 

 had the misfortune to be illiterate, and to find a very inef- 

 ficient exponent of his opinions, and of the principles on 

 which he conducted his works, in John Johnstone. Every 

 one who reads the work, which is popularly called Elkington 

 on Draining, should be aware, that it is not Joseph who 

 thinks and speaks therein, but John, who tells his readers 

 what, according to his ideas, Joseph would have thought and 

 spoken. In one portion of the book, entitled " On Hollow and 

 Surface Draining in general," which is discussed in nineteen 

 sections, Johnstone teaches avowedly in his own person, his 

 first sentence being, " This is a part of the draining system 

 not coming within the limits of Mr. Elkington's practice." 

 It is enough to say that these nineteen sections do not con- 

 tain a single suggestion of any value to a modern drainer. 

 A reader who has some previous acquaintance with the 

 subject will get a general idea of Elkington's discovery and 

 method from the earlier portion of the book, though, unless 

 he has seen some of Elkington's work, he will not therefrom 

 form an adequate opinion of his sagacity. Johnstone, mea- 

 sured by general capacity, is a very shallow drainer. He 



able point which had escaped us, that this old drainer " prescribes, in all 

 cases, excepting for water-meadows, the driving the drains right up and 

 down the fall of the land." 



* " An Account of the most approved Mode of Draining Land, ac- 

 cording to the System practised by Mr. Joseph Elkington." By John, 

 Johnstone, Land Surveyor. Edinburgh, 1797. 



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