PERMANENT PASTURE. 45 
if it is water slain, nothing can or will thrive that is of good 
value for feeding purposes. The reason is apparent; no land 
is so cold as that which is thinly covered with water, and the 
action of the sun’s rays renders it still colder, although one 
would not perhaps think so. A simple little experiment will 
soon prove this. Let the dubious one take a jar, fill it with 
water, wind tightly round the outside of the jar a flannel 
saturated with moisture, set it in the sun, and take the 
temperature of the water in it. After an exposure of some 
little time, again take the temperature, and it will be found to 
have fallen several degrees. Too much water will check the 
growth of plants which love moisture in reason; but drain 
your land, giving the moisture from heaven an opportunity of 
percolating through the soil instead of accumulating upon, or 
close beneath, the surface, and you will put all vegetable 
life into active operation. Rain collects the oxygen and 
nitrogen from the air, and when it percolates through the soil 
vegetable growth intercepts and absorbs it, scarcely losing a 
particle of the goodness it contains. Capillary attraction, or 
the drawing up of moisture from the subsoil (as a tree will 
suck it up by its roots, conveying it to its topmost branches), 
is arrested by stagnant surface water, but on drained lands 
this capillary attraction proceeds during a drought to the great 
advantage of the crop. Another simple experiment will illus- 
trate this. After a drought place a piece of linoleum, or 
floorcloth, on the dryest of land when the sun’s rays are on it. 
After a time take it up, and you will find that that side which 
has been placed face downwards will be damp, and the earth 
underneath it moist as well. On drained lands nature spreads 
her cloth of verdure over the surface of the soil, which has 
the same effect on the elements as the experiment we have 
quoted. A supply of moisture is drawn up from the sub-soil, 
which moisture is more or less laden with chemical compounds 
of assistance to plant life, and thus it is that by experiments 
