IRRIGATION. 



IRRIGATION. 



In the flowing meadows this work ought to 

 be done, if possible, early enough in the au- 

 tumn to have the whole meadow ready to catch 

 the first floods after Michaelmas ; the water, 

 being the first washing of the arable lands on. 

 the sides of the chalk hills, as well as the dirt 

 from roads, is then thick and good ; and this 

 remark, as to the superior richness of the flood 

 waters, is one that is commonly made in Berk- 

 shire and other parts of England. The length 

 of the autumnal watering cannot be precisely 

 stated, as much depends upon situations and 

 circumstances ; but if water can be command- 

 ed in abundance, the custom is to give mea- 

 dows a " thorough good soaking at first," per- 

 haps for a fortnight or three weeks, with an 

 intermission of two or three days during that 

 period, and continue for the space of two fort- 

 nights, allowing an interval of a week between 

 them. The works are then made as dry as 

 possible, to encourage the growth of the grass. 

 This first soaking is to make the land sink and 

 pitch close together, a circumstance of great 

 consequence, not only to the quantity, but to 

 the quality of the grass, and particularly to en- 

 courage the shooting of new roots, which the 

 grass is continually forming, to support the 

 forced growth above. 



While the grass grows freely, a fresh water- 

 ing is not wanted ; but as soon as it flags, the 

 water must be repeated for a few days at a time, 

 always keeping this fundamental rule in view, 

 "to make the meadows as dry as possible after 

 every watering, and to take off the water the 

 moment any scum appears upon the land, 

 which shows that it has already had water 

 enough." 



Some meadows that require the water for 

 three weeks in October, and the two following 

 months, will not, perhaps, bear it one week in 

 February or March, and sometimes scarcely 

 two days in April and May. 



In the catch-meadows, which are watered by 

 springs, the great object is to keep the works 

 very dry between the intervals of watering; 

 and as such situations are seldom affected by 

 floods, and generally have too little water, it is 

 necessary to make the most of the water, by 

 catching and rousing it as often as possible ; 

 and as the upper works of every pitch will be 

 liable to get more water than those lower 

 down, a longer time should be given to the lat- 

 ter, so as to make them as equal as possible. 

 Davis's Agriculture of Wiltshire, p. 125 127.) 



In Berkshire they first flood their water- 

 meadows, about Michaelmas; these are situ- 

 ated principally on the banks of the Kennet. 

 The first flooding they deem the richest in 

 quality: this they keep on the land for about 

 four days, and they then dry them for about a 

 fortnight, and after that the water is let on for 

 three or four days more ; those meadows which 

 are the most readily dried are the most pro- 

 ductive. There are none more so, in fact, 

 than those which have a porous, gravelly, or 

 broken flint bottoms, from which the flood-wa- 

 ter readily escapes, almost without drains. 

 They begin to feed their meadows with sheep 

 about the 6th of April, and continue feeding till 

 about, the 21st of May, when the meadows are 

 again flooded for a crop of hay ; the land is 



then flooded and dried alternately for three 

 days until hay-time. 



The number of acres of land in Wiltshire, 

 ' under this kind of management, has been com- 

 puted, and with a tolerable degree of accuracy, 

 : to be between 15,000 and 20,000. Some con- 

 siderable additions, however, have been made 

 ! to the water-meadows of the district since this 

 calculation was made. (Davis's Wilts., p. 122.) 

 About the same number of acres are formed 

 into water-meadows in Berkshire, and a still 

 larger number in Hampshire. No one has at- 

 tended more carefully to his water-meadows 

 than Lord Western, on some of those situated 

 on the London clay -formation in the Black- 

 water valley, in Essex, a soil of all others, per- 

 haps, from its tenacity, the least adapted to 

 their successful formation, and his testimony 

 is very important : " There is an old adage," 

 says his lordship, " that water is the best ser- 

 vant in agriculture, and the worst master. 

 Water has in itself intrinsic value; distilled 

 through chalk, lime, or marl, it acquires a por- 

 tion of their qualities, though preserving the 

 most perfect transparency, and, coming down 

 in torrents and floods, it carries along the finer 

 particles of earth and manure from the moun- 

 tains, or higher grounds, into the valleys; 

 hence, of course, it is that the valleys derive 

 their fertility, and the value of the meadow has 

 been originally created by an accumulation of 

 wealth from the hills." 



" In descending the Jura mountains, which 

 divide France from Switzerland, the very first 

 pasture you find on the descent evinces the 

 value placed on the mountain floods by the in- 

 habitants of those districts ; and, accordingly, 

 every stream is sedulously directed and con- 

 ducted over the pastures in a most skilful 

 manner. The very washing of the roads in 

 hasty rains is also attended to and applied to 

 the same purposes." This system of catching 

 the uncertain flood-waters is known amongst 

 farmers by the name of ca/cft-work, and though 

 highly valuable, yet they deem it infinitely less 

 important to them than irrigation, which is 

 watering (generally five or six times a year) 

 from a certain and ever-accessible head of 

 water, as a river, &c. And yet Lord Western's 

 testimony is decisive in favour of even one 

 eafcA-flooding ; for he observes, when speaking 

 of the expense of constructing the requisite 

 little channels to disperse the flood-waters over 

 the grass, " In many cases it will be trifling, in 

 some cases considerable ; but when the farmer 

 reflects that one winter's flooding will do more 

 in many, I may say in most cases, than thirty 

 loads an acre of the best rotten dung manure 

 that can be laid upon his grass lands, he can 

 hardly shrink from some considerable expen- 

 diture." If, then, the effects even of a catch- 

 flooding with water are so great, how infinitely 

 superior are the advantages capable of being 

 derived from a regular constant supply of the 

 enriching foul waters, like those issuing from 

 the drains of a large city, which is even now 

 most successfully employed near Edinburgh, 

 but worse than wasted in the case of London ! 

 Whatever may be the value, in an agricultural 

 point of view, of the solid contents of the Lon- 

 don sewers, yet to me the absolutely liquid 



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