AND ANGLING SONGS. 249 



and irretrievable), is much to be condemned. I fear, however, 

 that it has been already carried to an extreme in our Borderland ; 

 and I would warn loudly the landed proprietors and their tenantry, 

 in the more backward districts of Scotland, against rashly prose- 

 cuting a system which, although they may profit by it for the 

 moment, cannot fail to depreciate the value of the tillage-grounds, 

 and affect, beyond repair, the future interests of their holders. 



Of the misapplication of the system in question, on Tweed- 

 side, I could adduce a number of instances, were it prudent to 

 do so. 



In those cases where improvident and expensive operations 

 have been conducted at his individual outlay, it is upon the 

 tenant that the primary loss falls. The mischief done at length 

 becomes entailed, in a permanent form, at the throwing up or 

 expiry of the lease, on the land itself, the juicy virtues of which 

 have been disturbed and abstracted. But not only are the lessee 

 and his landlord made sufferers by so improvident and violent 

 a method of dealing with the subsoils, the community also are 

 brought in to bear their share of the consequences. Am I asked 

 how ? I point, without hesitation, to the present state of our 

 rivers during the greater part of the year, contrasting with it 

 their former condition when the system of thorough drainage was, 

 comparatively speaking, in its infancy. A noble river like the 

 Tweed, running, with its numerous feeders, through the heart of 

 a thickly populated district, a river famed of old for the fulness 

 and purity of its waters, not to speak of their riches in the 

 shape of salmon, trout, and other fish, which afford food and 

 sport to an extent almost fabulous such a river is surely not a 

 subject for desecration and abuse, such as it receives to a large 

 and increasing extent, at the hands of the tenantry on its banks, 

 in the strange belief that the grand secret of remunerative farm- 

 ing consists, under every circumstance, of disturbing the subsoils. 

 It is to the draining mania which at present prevails, in con* 



