588 



The Beginnings of Field Drainage. 



[Oct., 



take some small Faggot- Wood or Furze-Bushes, and chopping 

 them short, you are to cover the Flole therewith, adding at the 

 Top a broad Tile to secure it from any Impression that may 

 come from above." The result, says Sv^itzer proudly, is that 

 3'ou have a " Field or Garden, as hollow and as unfit to retain 

 stagnated Water as a Sieve." He claims that even in arable 

 land he has known these ' ' Tubes or underground Drains ' ' to 

 function after twelve years and that the cost was but about 

 twenty shillings an acre, wdiile where there was a gradient 

 fewer drains w^ould be required and the expense would be 

 proportionately less."^ 



Switzer's method was not generally followed, but adapta- 

 tions of it and methods embodying the same principle were 

 practised in divers parts of the country, latterly under the 

 name of plug draining.! The mole plough, which achieved the 

 same result by di'awing a cylindrical cartridge through the sub- 

 soil, appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century and 

 there seem to have been a number of types all coming into 

 use about the same time. Harry Watts was granted a patent 

 in 1797 for such a plough : it was to be drawn by four or 

 eight horses and was to be used in a water furrow or the 

 bottom of a trench. ^ The practice of using the early mole 

 ploughs to work in a furrow^ appears to have been general and 

 the drains were cut to a depth of about 15 or 18 in. but occa- 

 sionally less§ • the work was heavy and teams of horses up to 

 the number of fourteen or even twenty were employed. || The 

 "\^indlass system was introduced almost simultaneously : wind- 

 lasses worked by eight men, sometimes by w^omen, gave way 

 to windlasses worked bv horses.^ The steam cable svstem 

 which has now almost entirely superseded horse teams and 

 windlasses did not make its appearance until the second half 

 of the nineteenth century. 



* Practical Fruit Gardever, pp. '2b if. 



fW. Ellis, Modern Husbandman (1750), i. 109; Modern Land Steward 

 (1801), p. 254 ; John Jolmstone, Account of Elkinrjton's System (1808), p. 166 ; 

 Third Report of Select Committee (1836), p. 7 ; Qaarterhj Journal of Agricul- 

 ture, iv, 501 -f.^ and xi, 68 



:j; Patent Specification No. 2195. 



§ Letters and Papers on Agriculture (Batb and West of England Soc), ix, 

 110 ; Annals of Agriculture, xxxvi, 399, and xliii, 486 ; County Reports^ Cam- 

 bridgeshire^ p. 244. 



]| Annals of Agriculture, :s.xxyi, 399 ; County Pejwrts, Gloucestershire, p. 260^, 

 and Cambridgeshire^ p. 244 ; Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, ix, 388 ; R.A.S.E. 

 Journal^ iv, 36. 



Patent Specification No. 2195; Patent Specification No. 2373; Tiicbard 

 Liinibert's Patent (1800); Annals of Agriculture, xlii, 413; County Eeports, 

 Gloucestershire, pp. 260 fi^; Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, ix, 388 ; 

 R.A.S.E. Journal, iv,. 36. 



