FIELD beainagk] PEINCIPLES and PKxVCTICE OF [field dkaixaoe. 



experience. This is a lamentable truth ; but 

 we must now give our consideration to those 

 especial improvements which liave, during the 

 career of the society, taken place in the agricul- 

 tural parts of the kingdom. Amongst these, 

 perhaps, tlie very first deserving of especial at- 

 tention is drainage. Prom the earliest times at- 

 tempts have been made to drain. We believe 

 there are in existence specimens of clever work- 

 manship in this art, upwards of a century 

 old ; but when it ought to be done, and why 

 it ought to be done, and how it ought to be 



was drained on the four-foot plan. Prom 

 small beginnings, however, there often spring 

 very large results. Accordingly, this was the 

 commencement of the subterranean network 

 of those pipes, which have more than doubled 

 the value of our retentive soils. There was, 

 however, still a great deal to be done. The 

 proper tools had not yet been made, nor had 

 a cheap conduit yet been discovered. But, in 

 1814, a Birmingham maker succeeded in 

 manufacturing the cutting implements, which 

 have gradually been brought to perfection ; 



done, was never reduced to the simplicity of \ and, in the preceding year, at the Derby show 



an intelligent practical rule. AVhatever books 

 there were upon the subject, were entirely 

 destitute of principles. Lord Bacon, who pos- 

 sessed a large collection of works upon agri- 

 culture, had them, one day, piled up in his 

 court-yard, and set on fire; for, said he, "in 

 all these books I find no principles; they 

 can, therefore, be of no use to any man." 

 This we take to be one of the truest signs of 

 liis wisdom ; and this was just the deficiency in 

 all that had been done respecting drainage until, 

 in lSi3, Josiah Parkes undertook the task of 

 explaining its principles. Two years later, he 

 m.ade suggestions which led to the manufac- 

 ture of the steel tools which were necessary 

 for forming the deep cuttings, as well as the 

 cheap pipes, which were essential to carry oft' 

 the water from them after they had been 

 formed. Ten years previous to this, however, 

 when draining a peat-bog near Bolton, in 

 Lancashire, he made the discovery of the great 

 eftect which deep cuttings produced in 

 relieving the soil of a certain number of 

 inches of the water which, during a rainy 

 season, is stagnant, and remains in that state 

 until removed by evaporation in a dry season. 

 Purther experience brought him to the con- 

 clusion, that the shallow drainage advocated 

 by Mr. Smith, of Deanston, about eight miles 

 Irom Stirling, Scotland, was a vital error, and 

 that four feet, which left a sufficient layer of 

 dry, warm, surface earth, after allowing for 

 the rise of the moisture by capillary attraction 

 above the water-level of the drain, should be 

 the minimum depth. 



THE FIRST FIELD DRAINED. 

 On a farm near Bolton, Lancashire, belong- 

 ing to a celebrated bone-setter, the first field 

 89(3 



of the Agricultural Society, a person of the 

 name of John Eeade, a gardener by trade, 

 and a self-taught mechanic (well known as the 

 inventor of the stomach-pump), exhibited 

 cylindrical clay pipes, with which he had been 

 in the habit of draining the hot-beds of his 

 master. His method of constructing them 

 was, to wrap a lump of clay round a mandril, 

 and rub it smooth with a piece of flannel. 

 ]N"othing could be more simple. It was seen 

 by Mr. Parkes, who showed one of them to 

 Earl Spencer ; remarking, at the same tinie, 

 " My lord, with this pipe 1 will drain all Eng- 

 land." The council, on the motion of liis 

 lordship, awarded to John Eeade a silver 

 medal for his idea ; and, in the following year,, 

 ofi'ered a premiam for a tile-making machine. 

 A great deal of money was wasted in attempts, 

 and many patents were taken uut for the pur- 

 pose, but with indifi*erent success. At length, 

 in 1845, a person of the name of Thoimis 

 Scragg, at Shrewsbury, received a prize for u 

 raachino which triumphed over the diliicultics, 

 and pipes can now be made as fast as the 

 kilns can take them. Prom that hour the 

 work proceeded at a rapid pace. In tlie iV.- 

 lowing year, Sir Eobert Peel, from the know- 

 ledge he had obtained in the management of 

 his own property, passed an act, by which lour 

 millions sterling were appropriated towards 

 assiating landowners with loans for draining 

 their land, with leave to repay the advance by 

 instalments extending over twenty-two years. 

 Nearly the whole of this first loan was taken 

 up by the Scotch, before Englishmen had 

 made up their minds to take advantage of it. 

 The four millions of government money, how- 

 ever, was comparatively small, when placed in 

 juxtaposition with the sums supplied by pri- 



