17 



them their returns, is a profitable outlay, we shall do some- 

 thing better than cover in our French drains with such poor 

 stuff as brushwood, which in the nature of things cannot 

 maintain its resistance for more than a very few seasons. 

 Ultimately it must moulder away and help to fill the open- 

 ings in the pebble layer. The better method, and the one 

 which will ultimately be followed by progressive men, will 

 be to buy up galvanized iron sheets that have served their 

 purpose above ground, cut them into strips about a foot 

 wide, and make them serve for drain roofing under ground, 

 just as they may have served as house roofing above. A 

 coating of gas tar on both sides will probably double the 

 length of their underground spell of service. It is not too 

 much to say that the term of usefulness of a French drain 

 covered in with galvanized stripping will treble or quad- 

 ruple that of one in which the covering material has been 

 the porous and easily rotting brushwood. 



17. But after all the French -pebble drain, however great 

 improvement it may be upon our present system of either 

 open sluits or no drainage at all, is far from being a perfect 

 thing. Those that come after us will undoubtedly have 

 something to say about the ever recurring necessity for 

 taking up these make-shift affairs, cleaning them out, and 

 giving the water once more a free passage. They will then 

 have little hesitation in doing precisely what English 

 farmers, from one end of the country to the other, have 

 already done, even upon land on which they are merely 

 tenants and not the owners, that is, the laying down of 

 permanent drain-tiles. Properly laid, those drains outlist 

 several generations of farmers, carry off the water with 

 three or four times the certainty and swiftness of the 

 French drain, and never clog up. There is at least one 

 oxample on the Cape Peninsula of work of this class, and 

 by its means an immense acreage of worthless drowned 

 land, on which cattle could not venture without risk, has 

 been converted into one of the most productive market- 

 farms to be seen in the country. 



18. The gospel of trenching and draining is a hard one ; 

 it means considerable outlay long before a return can be 

 expected, and the customs of the country in everything 

 connected with land seem to have been based upon a 



c 



