106 AGRICULTURE. 



except water, and they are more portable both to the field 

 and in the field than any other conduit previously dis- 

 covered : cheap, light, handy, secure, efficacious. 



Perhaps some of our readers will boggle at this word 

 efficacious. Doubts will begin to trouble inexperienced 

 minds ; Will water get freely into these narrow-bottomed 

 drains ? Will pipes of this small capacity convey it away ? 

 The scepticism is natural ; but on each point we are able to 

 offer them abundant consolation and conviction consola- 

 tion from experience, conviction on argument. We have 

 seen hundreds of drains wrought in the manner we have 

 described, and laid with pipes, and in no instance where 

 the land contained water of drainage have they failed to run 

 freely. We never heard any one say they did not. This 

 ought to satisfy every person who is not of his own know- 

 ledge aware of an instance to the contrary : " Quod semper, 



not applicable. My own experience as to roots, in connexion with deep 

 pipe draining, is as follows: I have never known roots to obstruct a 

 pipe through which there was not a perennial stream. The flow of 

 water in summer and early autumn appears to furnish the attraction. 

 I have never discovered that the roots of any esculent vegetable have 

 obstructed a pipe. The trees which, by my own personal observation, 

 I have found to be most dangerous, have been red willow, black Italian 

 poplar, alder, ash, and broad-leaved elm. I have many alders in close 

 contiguity with important drains, and, though I have never convicted 

 one, I cannot doubt that they are dangerous. Oak, and black and white 

 thorns, I have not detected, nor do I suspect them. The guilty trees 

 h&ve in every instance been young and free growing ; I have never con- 

 victed an adult. These remarks apply solely to my own observation, 

 and may of course be much extended by that of other agriculturists. 

 I know an instance in which a perennial spring of very pure and (I 

 believe) soft water is conveyed in socket pipes to a paper-mill. Every 

 junction of two pipes is carefully fortified with cement. The only 

 object of cover being protection from superficial injury and from frost, 

 the pipes are laid not far below the sod. Year by year these pipes are 

 stopped by roots- Trees are very capricious in this matter. I was told 

 by the late Sir E. Peel that he sacrificed two young elm trees in the 

 park at Drayton Manor to a drain which had been repeatedly stopped by 

 roots, The stoppage was nevertheless repeated, and was then traced to 

 an elm tree far more distant than those which had been sacrificed. 

 Early in the autumn of 1850 I completed the drainage of the upper 

 p.irt of a boggy valley, lying, with ramifications, at the foot of marly 

 banks. The main drams converge to a common outlet, to which are 



