DRAINAGE. 85 



After Elkington, we find no notability in draining till 

 we come to Smith of Deanston, and his name at once 

 introduces us to modern practice and modern controversy. 

 We have now to deal with the case of lands which get rid 

 of the rain which falls upon them so slowly, that it becomes 

 either an hindrance to fertility, or an inconvenience to 

 agriculture, or both. This evil is often, perhaps oftener 

 than not, complicated with an almost imperceptible oozing 

 of bottom-water squeezed through the earth by the pres- 

 sure of superincumbent subterranean reservoirs, existing 

 in higher grounds, situated sometimes at a considerable 

 distance. But the surface-water is the main point, and 

 the bottom-water, if we may so call it, is amenable to the 

 same treatment, and, except in one occasional case,* will 

 be removed by the same means. But we can get on no 

 farther without definitions ; and here we are in a difficulty. 

 The nomenclature of draining is indefinite, because the 

 ideas of those who have practised the art have been con- 

 fused. Probably no other art ever had so long an infancy. 

 In the word soil, we include, for our present purpose, the 

 whole depth to which land is treated in our operations. 

 All our readers will have heard of soils open and stiff 

 pervious or permeable, and impervious porous and re- 

 tentive. We mean to select for use the last pair of these 

 epithets. By porous soils, we mean those which, in their 

 natural state, are capable of filtering through themselves 

 all or the greater part of the rain which falls upon them. 



* When we said that no one had yet excelled Elkington, we were 

 speaking of the treatment of mere springs. In the complicated case to 

 which our text refers, Mr. Parkes has often and most skilfully combined 

 his own more peculiar practice with Elkington's discovery; removing 

 the water from above by parallel thorough-drains, and giving to that 

 which is squeezed up from below an easy access to the same drains by 

 boreholes. This combination would however be useless in the hands of 

 a man who did not inherit somewhat of the old prophet's sagacity. He 

 appears to have dropped his mantle on a man of his own county. Mr. 

 Parkes has introduced a great improvement by securely piping down 

 his boreholes, and by connecting those perpendicular pipes with the 

 pipes in his drain. 



