SECTION VI. 



441 



blem that has not as yet been solved, by men in either of these depart- 

 ments. The causes which occasion it are twofold : first, underground 

 water — in which case it is completely to be removed by draining ; and 

 secondly, tenacity of soil, which retains moisture as if in a cup— a 

 species of evil for which no cure has ever been found. Observing some 

 years ago, that on no land where the subsoil was completely dry were 

 any Rushes ever known to spring up ; and reasoning on the indisput- 

 able maxim that, suhlatd causa, tollitur effectus, I conceived, that if any 

 means could be devised to carry off superfluous moisture from under- 

 neath the soil, and to carry it off speedily, the Rushes would disappear 

 as a matter of course. Experience had shown that, from underground 

 drains, however carefully executed, no such effect would follow ; because 

 numerous examples exist of persons who, from an anxiety to lay dry 

 particular fields, have intersected them with drains in all directions, 

 within five and six feet of one another, and still Rushes have sprung up, 

 even on the tops of their drains. Nothing, therefore, promised to be 

 eff^ectual except some method of rendering the entire subsoil a drain, and 

 thus carrying off the water w^hich descended from the higher grounds, 

 or fell from the sky, before it had time to stagnate. 



For this important purpose deep trenching seemed particularly well 

 adapted, as the first principle of it consists in reversing the order of 

 the natural strata, and putting down, to any given depth, the loose and 

 friable soil which has been the subject of culture. By that means, a 

 subsoil of an entirely different quality, namely, the fine mould of the 

 surface, would at once be created at the bottom of the trench, and 

 through which the superfluous water, formerly retained by impervious 

 strata, would now readily percolate. Besides this, another object of 

 immense interest presented itself — and that w^s the sudden and effectual 

 alteration, and therefore melioration, of the soil from wet to dry, from 

 stiff to porous ; and if it were true, as already stated, that " the best 

 soil, whether for wood or agricultural crops, was one that is at once 

 loose and deep," here both depth and looseness would at once be obtained, 

 with the power of retaining water only to the proper extent, and exert- 

 ing a great chemical agency for the preservation of manures. 



My first experiment, in reducing this theory to practice, was made 

 on about two acres of old meadow land, on which Rushes had been 

 abundant from time immemorial, from two to three feet high. Having 

 previously ascertained that there were no great underground springs, I 

 directed the whole to be trenched eighteen inches deep. The trenching 

 was effectively executed in the line of the slope or declination of the 

 surface, so that, if any interstitial mounds of subsoil (see the foregoing 

 note) had been inadvertently left in the bottom, no obstruction, after 



