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soil. Under any circumstances however a sufficient number 

 of well-planned French drains should be taken out down the 

 main slope in every part of their course, and should 

 descend into the subsoil a little lower than the depth to 

 which the trenching has been regulated. This excellent 

 system, perhaps the only one that will for a long time be 

 in use in this country, consists of a Y-shaped trench cut 

 down into the subsoil straight along the main slope of the 

 land. The greatest care must be taken to leave the bottom 

 of the trench unbroken, and in an exact plane. Clearly if 

 its bottom wavers in the least the water will not get a free 

 outflow, pools will form in its course, and much of the value 

 of the drain will be lost. To one unaccustomed to earth- 

 work, it would seem the simplest thing in the world to take 

 out a drain, but it is really. a skilled operation, and only a 

 labourer who has practised it under a sharp foreman will 

 carry out the true plane requisite for the bottom water-flow 

 without many mistakes and repeated patchings. Remember 

 that whenever the subsoil-floor of the drain has been taken 

 out too deep, and has to be repaired and fetched into line 

 by ramming material into it, you will have a soft place, 

 where the water has a tendency to hang. It is therefore 

 very good policy to employ for this task men who have had 

 considerable practice, seeing that the work is better done, 

 and more economically, because more rapidly executed. It 

 is not necessary that the bottom of the trench should be of 

 the full width of an ordinary spade. Draining spades for 

 the special purpose of finishing off such work are made 

 barely six inches wide, and there is economy in their use. 

 The usual custom is to fill the channel with rounded river 

 pebbles, or similar rubble, to a depth of about nine inches 

 or a little more. Angular fragments of stone are to be 

 avoided if possible, as they do not give nearly such large 

 interstices, and they are much more apt to cause clogging 

 and stoppage. Upon the top of this pebble-bed it is cus- 

 tomary to put a layer of brushwood or takkies, well battened 

 down. The only object of so compressing the brushwood 

 is to work the layer together and prevent filling from soil 

 dropping through it into the pebble-bed. Some time in the 

 near future when cultivators have found out that a little 

 capital buried under the surface of the soil, which gives 



