248 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



THE DROUGHT OF 1864. 



THE extent to which high farming is at the present day carried 

 on in our Border valleys, to the prejudice, eventually, I cannot 

 help thinking, of the landowners and the community at large, 

 leads, in connexion with the following verses, to a few remarks. 

 That the application of lime, manures, and chemical substances, 

 to the soil, is a legitimate and necessary mode of treating it, in 

 combination with the usual farm processes, I am quite ready to 

 admit. It is only, in fact, by the liberal use of these adjuncts 

 that paying crops can be raised, and the exhausted capabilities 

 of the tillage-grounds which furnish them restored or kept up to 

 the mark. Such applications may, in some instances, not corre- 

 spond in their effect to the results anticipated ; but there is this 

 to be said for them, that they rarely do permanent injury to the 

 soil on which they are used ; and only in certain instances, and 

 that solely through the intervention of the draining system, so 

 largely carried on by the moneyed tenantry of the day, are other 

 interests affected by them. 



It is to this draining mania (for the spirit with which draining 

 operations are carried on has grown to be nothing less), that I 

 would direct my remarks. As a means of reclaiming waste land, 

 and of improving soils overlying retentive subsoils, the utility of 

 the drainage system stands unquestioned. When judiciously 

 carried out and brought to bear upon places, the natural products 

 of which, in the shape of rushes and rank herbage, betray the 

 underlying presence of water, the improvements which result 

 cannot be too highly estimated. But, on the other hand, the 

 application of the system universally, without regard being paid 

 to the requirements of the soil, or to the results which that appli- 

 cation may bring about (results, be it noticed, when pernicious, 

 not merely of a temporary or remedial nature, but permanent 



