12.—1846.] 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
189 
CHEAP AND DURABLE ROOFING, 
AND THE BEST RESISTER OF FROST FOR GARDEN 
PURPOSES. 
BY HER ROYAL LETTERS 
MAJESTY'S PATENT. 
* row, London, Manufacturers and only Patentees of 
THE PATENT 'ASPHALTED FELT FOR ROOFING, 
and which for many years has been in extensive use for Roofing 
Houses, Verandahs, all kinds of Farm Buildings, Sheds, ai 
for COVERING GARDEN FRAMES, TO PROTECT PLANTS 
AGAINST THE EFFECTS OF THE FROST, beg to call the 
5 
£a 
le for afin , &c., and is also patronized by 
Her Majesty’s Boar of Ordnance, Commissioners of Woods and 
y and the Botanical 
gest and most 
durable materials, and is saturated with the BEST OF AS- 
PHALTE OR BITUMEN (THE SAME AS SELECTED AND USED 
BY Sim IsAMBERT BRUNEL FOR THE THAMES TUNNEL, BEING 
FOUND THE MOST ELASTIC AND EFFECTIVE RESISTER OF WET). 
NO OTHER FELT HAS THIS ASPHALTE BUT F. M‘NEILL 
4; COs, and which renders it impervious to rain, snow, and 
frost, and a non-conductor of heat and sound. Its advantages 
are Lightness, Warmth, Durability, and Economy. — Price 
ONLY One Penny Per SQUARE Foor. i 
*,* Samples, with Directions for its Use, and Testimonials 
of seven years’ experience (which contain much useful informa- 
tion), from Noblemen, Gentlemen, Gardeners, Architects, and 
Builders, sent FREE to any part of the Town or Country, and 
orders by Post executed. 
The new Vice-Chancellor’s Courts, the Offices attached, and 
Passages leading to Westminster-hall, Dr. Reid’s Offices, and 
Other Buildings at the New Houses of Parliament, are roofe: 
witl M‘Neixt and Co.’s Felt, andis known by its having the 
appearance of lead roofs. 
iy 
Sentation, as the only Works in Great Britain where the above 
adeis F. M‘NEILL & Co.’s Manufactories, 
cultural Public that his PATENT ] 
MACHINE is now ready, whereby the greatest regularity may 
be insured in the deposition of all Seeds. A team of four horses 
will be found sufficient power to draw one of the largest size, 
Price of Machine, with six rows.... . £35 
» eight rows. 
” ten rows 
. 45 
à 0) articulars m: de to Mr. JOHN 
WEATHERSTONE, Cassington, near Oxford; or to Messrs. GILL 
and Warp, High-street, Oxford.—Agents wanted in all parts of 
country. 
INGLES HAND DIBBLING MACHINE, for 
E depositing all kinds of Seed. It is so constructed that it 
will at the same moment make the hole and deliver the exact 
quantity of Seed with extreme regularity, nor is the soil liable 
to choke the point. 
Agent in London :—Mr. Marx FOTHERGILL, 40, Upper Thames 
Street, where the Machines may be seen. 
GUPERPHOSPH ATE OF 
LIME, 7L per ton, at 
EE 
d now much improved, War- 
Numerous references to 
bling-Machine so much approved of. City Repository for Agri- 
fultural Impl , 118, ured 
ane. 
The Agricultural 
(5 asette. 
SATURDAY, MARCH 91, 1846. 
MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
Wenxxspay, Mar. 2 1 
Tauunsny, — — 
Waoxmspay, April A Society of England 
Tuurspar, — 
2—Agricultural Imp. Sov, of Ireland. 
LOCAL SOCIETIES. 
Ross—E. Lothian—Taunton—Fifeshire—Leyland Hundred —Wooler— 
Co, Cork—Strathmore—Portarlington. 
Mar. FARMERS’ CLUBS, 
m 25 Plympton St. Mary— New- | Mar. #0—Marlington 
— $28 April 9— J 
= ERR St. Mary— Bolsover | — s — Wrentham 
— 28- Melroe ain Way - m — Coliumpton — 
Hereford 
Ar the outset o 
we drew attentio 
f our REMARKS UPON DRAINAGE, 
B n to an error latent in the com- 
monly rec i 1 Moa a 
lay Jud xps notion of its purpose, as being “to 
B aee Y; we ventured to submit, as a more 
comprehensive definition of ; n i 1 
Aird : n of its object, the equa 
Etr OUNON O PUA Pures und wo endea- 
voured to illustrate the a; A Ma 
ercolation of the rain 
i This 
u side- 
ration by the rejection of all SEN VCI Fold 
ing of underground springs, as belonging to a dif- 
ferent question altogether, and, generally speaking, 
to a different description of soils; and we marked 
the above mentioned error as the parent of shallow 
drainage, or, we might perhaps rather say, the grand- 
p eat foriteimmediate progeny wastheold fashioned 
igh ridged furrow,from which, through the interme- 
diate stage of the shallow drain, the declension has 
been gradual and hard contested, theory and practice 
fighting their way inch by inch, down to the pipe 
tile laid three or even four feet deep. 
We cannot help pausing for a moment to contem- 
plate the silent perseverance (if one may so speak) 
with which Nature patiently vindicates her admir- 
able truths, and reveals the matchless perfection of 
her most hidden and unostentatious processes, 
through the slow medium of human discovery. How 
little is the agriculturist, who “babbles of green 
fields," calling this *good land," and that * bad 
land,” conscious, generally speaking, of the under- 
ground work that has been going on through the 
layse of ages, by percolation and filtration during 
the winter half of the year, and by capillary attrac- 
tion during the summer half, toconstitute and support 
that perfect combination of mechanical texture and 
chemical quality which characterise what are called 
the “best soils.” And it may, perhaps, be added, 
how little idea have we in our present infancy of 
knowledge and practice, whilst humbly following 
that wholesome natural process which drainage imi- 
tates, of the effects which its constantly ameliorat- 
ing influence upon the character of the soil may 
ultimately attain. 
If the rain do not sink through the subsoil one of 
two things must happen: either it must lie stag- 
nant upon the surface, saturating the soil the whole 
winter through, starving and rotting the roots of 
plants it was intended to refresh and nourish ; or, if 
the declivity be sufficient, it will flow off superfi- 
cially, down the furrows or any other channel it 
can find, carrying away with it all the most valuable 
part of the soil, and the manure which it has cost 
such labour and expence to apply, and leaving the 
field, to use Anrnun Youne’s not inapt similitude, 
“like an overboiled joint, with all the gravy run out 
of it.” But the damage does not end here; for upon 
clay soils, which retain the wet during the wiater, a 
further mischief happens, for, when spring and seed 
time arrive, and other lands are beginning to get 
warm from the returning rays of the sun, undrained 
land is only beginning to get dry : that is to say, the 
water which could not get off in any other way is 
beginning to go off by evaporation. Now we all 
know by experience that nothing produces so intense 
a degree of cold as evaporation from a wet surface. 
"The familiar experiment of wetting one hand and 
holding out both for the air to blow upon them, has 
been often adduced in proof of this ; the degree of 
cold which the wet surface will endure, in compari- 
son with the dry one, would remove any doubt.upon 
the subject. In the East Indies, the common 
method of cooling rooms during the most intensely 
hot weather is by hanging wet blinds outside the 
open windows; the evaporation from these “ T: 
ties,” as they are called, reduces the temperature 
with a rapidity that nothing else willeffect. A still 
more striking instance is afforded in the manufac- 
ture of ice during summer by the simple means of 
rapid evaporation. And such preciseiy is the phe- 
nomenon that occurs in spring upon the surface of 
an undrained field : the warmer the first rays of the 
returning sun, the colder the land will be until it 
has parted with its superfluous moisture. The in- 
evitable consequence is a delayed, and, therefore, 
hurried sowing, aggravated by the untractable state 
of the soil, which no mortalimplement can reduce 
into the semblance of a seed bed, nor any manure, 
English, African, or Peruvian, coax into reasonable 
temper or fertility. 
Such were the evils attempted to be cured by 
the plough-suggested, but otherwise very artificial, 
device of the ridge and furrow, which, in meeting 
very imperfectly one evil introduced another. Stag 
nation of water being the disease, it was conceived 
that anything that would get rid of it would be the 
remedy. It was clearly decided, nem. con., that 
the clouds were in the wrong for sending so much 
rain, and that the earth in lying level was lying 
under a mistake. The Gods themselves must have 
laughed to see the world under them, once smooth 
and flat, dressed up suddenly in corduroy stripes by 
the solemn sagacity of man; and, as he chose to 
take the regulation of Nature into his own hands, 
they left him to pay for it. The rain, which was 
sent to fertilise his soil, became the cause of its in- 
fertility, and the channels that he had made became 
the path by which the robber took away, not only 
the good that he was sent to deliver, but a pretty 
stroug solution ofthe farmer's property likewise. 
In the explanation of this lies the chemical his- 
tory of drainage. There is not an animal that 
breathes, nor a fire that burns, nor a particle of 
vegetable or animal matter that decays unburied 
upon the earth, that does not yield to the atmo- 
sphere certain gases which are, in fact, the essence 
of everything which we include under the general 
name of manure. We see them rise in the smoke 
from a fire, in the steam from the dungheap, and 
from our own breath in frosty weather; and though 
the eflluvia from decaying matter is invisible to the 
eye, we have another sense that distinguishes it 
lainly enough. Where do they go? Are they 
ost? Thereis no such word as “lost” in the vo- 
cabulary of Nature. The ammonia which the farmer 
permits to depart unquestioned, Nature receives 
and economises in her universal storehouse. That 
inestimable essence which constitutes the animating 
and fertilising principle of every organic manure, 
under whatever name or in whatever form we may 
apply it to our fields, whether from the farmyard or 
stable, or from the distant islands of the Pacific, is 
too precious to be wasted by Nature as it is by 
man. The atmosphere receives it ; its affinity for 
pure water disposes it to unite with the vapours 
already existing there, and it returns to the earth 
in every shower that falls. * Ammonia," says Lir- 
BIG in his valuable work on the “ Chemistry of Agri- 
culture,” “rises from putrified substances in the form 
of a gas, which is extremely soluble in water; but 
it cannot remain long in the atmosphere, as every 
shower of rain effects its condensation, and conveys 
it to the surface of the earth; hence, also, rain 
water at all times contains ammonia, though not 
always in equal quantity. It must contain more in 
summer than in spring or winter, because the inter- 
vals of time between the showers are in summer 
greater; and when several wet days occur, the rain 
of the first must contain more of it than that of the 
second ; and the rain of a thunderstorm after along 
protracted drought for this reason contains the 
greatest quantity conveyed to the earth at one time. 
It may likewise be detected in snow-water.” And 
he goes on to mention some experiments made in 
the month of March at Giessen, in Germany, in 
which the lower layers of snow, on being separately 
analysed, were found to contain a larger quantity 
of the gas, whilst the upper ones had scarcely a per- 
ceptible trace. 
The value of this discovery in reference to the 
filtration of rain through the ground, by which every 
shower becomes a tribute of natural fertility to the 
soil, and of regeneration to the subsoil, and the con- 
sequent importance of the means by which we are 
able to open this passage, and thus prevent its 
superficial escape, it is needless toinsist upon. But 
the subject of drainage viewed in all its relations is 
one whose, we had almost said, national importance 
is such, and so daily more obvious, that we shall 
take an early opportunity of entreating again the 
patience of our readers with its details.— C. W. H. 
A FEW WORDS ABOUT A SAVINGS’ BANK. 
Havine advocated in the Agricultural Gazette 
savings’ banks, as improving the condition of the in- 
dustrious classes, I trust you will give insertion to the 
following plain address which I have drawn up, in the 
hope that it may be published in a separate distributive 
form, and circulated by those of your readers who feel 
an interest in the well-being of our rural labouring 
population.—J. H. 
Address :—So you are a poor man willing to lay by 
a shilling a week, but want to know first a little about 
a savings’ bank ?— well, then, it shall be told you, 
A savings’ bank is an institution for receiving small 
savings, established by wealthy people, who would like 
to see you better off in your circumstances, and more 
respectable in your condition. They neither receive 
profit nor advantage from it—on the contrary, they de- 
vote much of their time and attention to its manage- 
ment: they would rather you should save your money 
by depositing it in a savings’ bank, than by spending it 
in a wasteful way, at the ale-house or at home. hey 
would wish you to save what part of your hard earnings 
you can spare, against a time when it will stand a friend 
o you—when you may want it more than you do now 
— when every shilling may be worth to you as 
much as two shillings are at the present moment. This 
they would have you do for your benefit, and then by- 
and-by you will be able to help yourself in a tme of 
scarce employ in a time of sickness a time of 
old age—when it will comfort and relieve you instead 
of having starvation at home, poverty at your sick.bed, 
and your old days ended in a workhouse. 
A savings’ bank is a place of profit, as well as a place 
of deposit. This is a great advantage to you, because 
if there were no such institution as a savings’ bank, 
you could receive no such profit for your money, 
whereas a savings’ bank gives you interest for small 
sums, which you could receive nowhere else. 
savings’ bank is a place of security— better in fact 
than any other security you could get elsewhere, Re- 
member this, that as soon as you place money in a 
savings’ bank, you become by the possession of your 
deposit book the ereditor of the nation—that is, the 
Government who represent thenation are your debtors. 
In short, your money is just as safe there as if you 
placed it in the Bank of England, because your money 
eventually forms a part and parcel of the money in the 
Bank of England, and you have as much right to recall 
it as any nobleman who may have fifty thousand pounds 
there, with this difference only, that you ap ly for it 
through the agency of the gentlemen at the savings' 
bank who are your trustees in the matter. 
Lastly, at a savings’ bank you receive back your 
