46 PRACTICAL NOTES ON GRASSES AND GRASS GROWING. 
and practical experience we ascertain the ways and means by 
which we may assist the laws of nature, and the folly of our 
trying to resist them. Again, one knows that fallen rain, 
impregnated with air, percolating the soil, causes decom- 
position to progress, not only with spent vegetable matter, 
but also with mineral matter, thus developing a further food 
supply to growing plants, which will not take place where the 
land is undrained and stagnant water allowed to collect. This 
also we will exemplify. If a post which has been deeply sunk 
into the ground be dug up after several years standing, it will 
be found that decomposition has been most active where the 
sun, wind, and rain have had full play, whilst that part of the 
post which has been sunk deepest, and where the sub-soil was 
wettest, will be found the soundest. So great is the power of 
resisting decomposition where neither air nor light can penetrate 
that a freshly severed branch of a tree sunk deeply in water, 
or buried deeply in wet ground, will be found after, say, forty 
years, as fresh and green as the day on which it was cut ; but 
when once dried, or partially dried, decomposition will start 
and cannot be arrested, only delayed. 
Another advantage of draining is that the land so dealt with 
not only absorbs, but retains the sun’s heat; and it will be 
noticed that the badly drained spots in a field are the first to 
succumb to heat as well as to cold, the plants growing thereon 
become starved, and their roots rotten, 
To the importance of the arterial drainage of one’s 
pastures, we would add that it is most desirable to so arrange 
the water supply that as little water as possible runs off the 
surface upon which it has fallen, but at the same time no 
stagnant water must be allowed to accumulate. The under 
drains must be so deftly arranged in accordance with the 
nature of the land, and its slopes, that the water does not run 
into the drains too quickly, so that the crop on the land has 
not sufficient time to rob it of the valuable ingredients ; nor 
