MEADOWS. 117 



have your canal of derivation, your reservoir, your 

 cuts or ditches, and, lastly, your fosse or pit of dis- 

 charge, which, to be useful, must be well construct- 

 ed and judiciously placed. The cana? and reservoir 

 will necessarily occupy the highest ground, and he 

 proportioned to the quantity of water to be conduct- 

 ed and retained ; the cuts or ditches, supplied from 

 the reservoir, will be parallel to each other, of near- 

 ly equal descent, but of diameters diminishing in 

 proportion to their length, so as to give to the water 

 the same swiftness it had when its volume was 

 greatest. Stops or gates must be made in the cuts 

 or ditches in such number as may be necessary so 

 to pond the water as to make it overflow the lower 

 sides of the ditches, and at such points as will, from 

 the shape of the ground, diffuse it most generally. In 

 this way, small streams, occasional showers, and 

 dissolving snows may be turned to great account, 

 and with this additional advantage, that they require 

 no reservoirs, and little, if any, draining, and only 

 cuts or ditches formed with a plough or a hoe. 



A third kind, compounded of the two others, is 

 sometimes seen in Europe, where the water, after 

 being employed in irrigating the sides of hills, is 

 brought upon flats for the purpose of inundation, or, 

 more generally, for that of forming reservoirs, from 

 which it may again be raised by machinery, such 

 as the noria of the Moors, or the hydraulic ram of 

 Montgolfier, &c.* 



II. Of Artificial Meadows. 



We have seen that natural meadows abound in 

 plants either useless or pernicious; and that it is 

 among the principal labours of agriculture to eradi- 



* Whoever may have occasion to study the two subjects 

 (draining and irrigation), either separately or in connexion, can- 

 not do better than consult the Hydraulic Architecture of Belli- 

 dor, the Hydraulics of Dubuat, M. de Ourche's General Treatise 

 on Meadows, Defue on the Embankments of Holland, and Rich 

 ardson's Agriculture. 



