PROF. C. U. SHEPHARD'S ADDRESS. 259 



soil. The Duke of Rutland has thus redeemed 5,500 acres of 

 land; and, in doing so, has employed 11,000.000 tiles. Hun- 

 dreds of thousands of acres of marshes and fens, once covered 

 with peat and stagnant water, are now intersected by canals ; 

 and, in many instances, the water is lifted out by powerful steam- 

 engines, leaving fields that now yearly wave with golden crops 

 of grain. In the neighborhood of Ely, is a tract of 800 acres 

 of wet land, that sold for as many shillings, which now rents for 

 nearly ten dollars the acre. 



But science has not only suggested, to the cultivator, the im- 

 portance of removing, by subterranean drains, superfluous water 

 from some of his lands, she has taught him the value of the con- 

 verse process of introducing it upon other tracts, by means of 

 channels above ground. Reference is not here had to that spe- 

 cies of irrigation which has been practised from the oldest times 

 upon the parched lands of Asia and Southern Europe ; but to the 

 system of winter and spring flowing of grass lands, instituted 

 chiefly for the purpose of supplying alkaline silicates, earthy 

 carbonates, and other well-known ingredients of the grasses. 

 These are brought down in the water draining from higher 

 regions, and which is delivered by means of shallow gutters, 

 carried around the descending slopes, tier below tier, in such a 

 manner as to be distributed over the intervening valleys and 

 flats. By this method, wide districts have actually increased, 

 in the enormous ratio of 800 per cent, upon the income they 

 formerly afforded. 



But the successes obtained in the counties of Norfolk and 

 Lincolnshire, in consequence of the study bestowed upon the 

 composition of soils and fertilizers, are, on the whole, among the 

 most striking we are able to bring forward, and serve of them- 

 selves to place scientific farming on the highest possible ground, 

 as contrasted with the old system of routine. We are informed, 

 that the late Lord Leicester found, at the close of the last century, 

 that, under the old modes of culture, his naturally barren, sandy 

 soils, which had been producing only poor crops of rye, finally 

 ran down, so as to command a rent of only one dollar and a 

 quarter per acre. As a last resort, it was turned over to the 

 improvements of science. Well-contrived experiments were set 



