Improvement of Peaty Ground, 



415 



other eartli* to the peat would not enable him to dispense in 

 some degree with the serious expense incurred by very large 

 doses of lime. 



I have been led into greater length than I had intended in 

 describing the practice of farmers upon peat-soils^ and far greater 

 than 1 should have ventured upon if I had been stating not their 

 practice, but my own notions. Members of the Society, in 

 answer to inquiries I thought it right to address to them, have 

 obligingly furnished me with more and more fresh information 

 too valuable to be suppressed. There remains but a single point 

 of detail to which I must advert, of no great importance indeed, 

 but farming, like other arts, is made up of details. 



Generally in draining, but almost always in peat-draining, it is 

 necesssary to dig deep open ditches as main outfalls for the 

 water. The strand or clay thus thrown out should not be left in 

 a high ridge, but should be spread by wheelbarrows over the 

 peat-land in winter. The steep banks, however, of a ditch 5 feet 

 deep will crumble in year by year, and, unless the w^atercourse be 

 constantly cleared, there will arise some obstruction. Yet the 

 attention thus required may in time be relaxed, at least under a 

 new owner, so that the whole improvement may in the end be dila- 

 pidated, and the original bog be restored. But in Scotland, as 

 Mr. Morton informs me, there is a very neat practice of shelving 

 back the banks from the water's edge by a gradual slope of 15 

 or 20 feet into the field, so that the new level of the watercourse 

 is thus placed for ever beyond the chance of neglect ; and if the 

 field be arable, the plough works down to the very brink. A 

 good example of it may be seen on Lord Ducie's farm at Whit- 

 field, near Bristol. Still this must usually be an expensive ope- 

 ration. It is not, however, so expensive upon the kind of land 

 we are now dealing with, provided the first 2 or 3 feet of soil 

 from the surface be peat ; for the farmer can burn the soil which 

 he must otherwise draw away. Heaps of it are made near the 

 water-course, which sometimes burn down deep under the surface, 

 and thus the greater part of the ground to be moved is converted 

 into peat-ashes, a manure of known value. The gravel below is 

 then wheeled out upon the peaty land, and care should be taken 

 to replace the upper soil on the newly-formed slope. The 

 appearance of this Scotch practice is exceedingly neat, and its 

 application to peat-land is, I see, very easy. 



* On my farm in Nottinghamshire I occupy a tract of peaty meadow 

 lying lower than the surface of the adjoining river Idle. I have drained 

 it by the use of a steam-engine, and have found that a thick top-dressing 

 of sand improves the pasture more than lime or any other dressing which 

 I have tried.— Spencer. 



