CHAP. x. PARING AND BURNING. 863 



especially when broken up for the first time, for the incorporation of 

 the ashes opens the soil so much that the roots of plants can after- 

 wards feed therein, and fine crops of wheat may be raised. Clay ashes, 

 or rather the nodules of burnt clay, tend to diminish the stubborn 

 adhesion of stiff tenacious clays, and form an excellent addition to the 

 soil. The breast-plough is the best implement for such soils. 



Upon the whole, then, the paring and burning of land may be 

 beneficially resorted to on many soils especially those which have 

 been barren for any length of time. On bad grass lands the operation 

 is useful, provided it is conducted with caution, and the ashes are 

 spread as speedily and uniformly as possible over the surface, and that 

 especial care is afterwards taken not to exhaust the soil by repeated 

 crops of corn when it is intended to be again laid down to grass. 



CHAPTER XL 

 ON DRAINING. 



rTIHERE is no operation more essential to the improvement of many 

 _|_ classes of land than draining. 



Though vegetation cannot progress without an ample supply of 

 water, yet in many soils water is so superabundant as to be productive 

 of the most injurious consequences, causing the herbage to be coarse, 

 watery, and inadequate to the proper support of cattle fed on such 

 pastures. 



Draining often constitutes a sine qua non in good farming, in the 

 absence of which all other operations, however tedious, or laborious, 

 or expensive, would be utterly ineffectual. Whilst the soil is saturated 

 with water, it cannot be subjected to any successful system of tillage, 

 or adequately pulverised. It is impossible, moreover, for manures to 

 be productive of anything like their full and proper effect, unless t.he 

 soil has first been brought into an appropriate state for their reception. 



Excess of moisture in the soil is usually attributable to one of two 

 causes, viz., to rain water or other moisture resting on a surface which 

 is either impervious itself or rests upon an impermeable stratum, or to 

 the water of springs pouring over it, or confined beneath it. In strong 

 clays the first-mentioned is usually the predominating cause, but in 

 most other soils the evil chiefly arises from the second. It is, there- 

 fore, necessary that the farmer should inquire into and fully ascertain 

 the cause, before he takes any steps towards removing the evil. 



In past years drainage has been the means of effecting the reclama- 

 tion of many hundred thousands of acres of waste land, as well as of 



