GRASS. 3y^ 



just ideas on this subje6l of mills ? There is scarcely one 

 to be found, but does mischief to an estate to ten times the 

 value of the rent these wretched eredlions let at. Mr. 

 Repton's father, on the same farm, improved a bog 25 

 years ago, as well as the mill would permit, laying a great 

 dressing of gravel on a boggy part ; but from being kept 

 bv the mill a saturated spunge, the gravel is now got 

 down two feet deep, and overgrown with the spontaneous 

 rubbish of the bog. If you will have mills, you must give 

 up all ideas of true meadow improvement. 



Mr. Reeve, of Wighton, may perhaps be considered 

 as the prince of grass-land improvers in Norfolk : he has 

 very few rivals that have come to my knowledge: one 

 great improvement -consists of 45 acres, effe6led without 

 irrigation ; the other of 50 acres, by means of many exer- 

 tions, finishing in-irrigation ; the latter will be mentioned 

 under another head. The former tra6l is situated between 

 a line of chalk hill, on one side full of springs, and a mill 

 river pent up on the other, so as to poison and turn to bog 

 all the land below it : the springs from the hills thus meet- 

 ing the soakage of the river, it may easily be supposed 

 what the efFefl must be : the land was a quaking danger- 

 ous bog. His cure was efFedlive, and such as could not 

 fail ; he turned an arch, traced by a level, 160 yards long, 

 for catching the soakage of the mill-pond, and continued 

 it an open drain to the length of three quarters of a mile 

 parallel, and near the river, gaining such a fall as now to 

 keep the water in the drain four feet below the surface of 

 the land, in places where before it was never more than 

 six inches. To cut off the springs from the chalk-hill he 

 run a deep ditch at the foot of the hill, varying in depth 

 according to the level of the line, but efFedlive in cutting 

 off the springs. 



In the parts where it must be of the greatest depth, as 

 B b 4 that 



