500 On the Advantage of Deep Drainage. 



emit the water contained in them. I have given some of the 

 many instances in which deep draining has been found far supe- 

 rior to the shallow mode. I am satisfied with the result, and my 

 hope is that the system of draining deep will in time be generally 

 adopted. 



Mr. Webster says that the deep-drainage system is pretended 

 to be a new one ; I believe that it has been newly reproduced, 

 and by the science and good sense of Mr. Parkes ; but that the 

 system is not new, and only revived, may be proved by a book 

 written in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and called 4 Blyth's 

 Improver Improved;' and still more anciently was the system 

 practised in our country by the Romans, as was discovered by 

 excavations to have been the case some few years ago, when a 

 regular system of deep drains at wide intervals was found to have 

 been the practice when the Romans had possession of the greatest 

 part of Britain. 



I should be exceedingly sorry if I had said a word which Mr. 

 B. Webster could think offensive. It would appear to me as 

 absurd to belong to a " faction " for deep or shallow draining as 

 we all think it laughable in £ Gulliver's Travels ' that there should 

 be in Lilliput a deadly feud between Big and Little-endians. I 

 have sought to establish what I believe to be the truth ; but I do 

 not say a word against Mr. B. Webster's practice nor against that 

 of the friends he has quoted. I make no comment on the prac- 

 tice of others ; I merely state what I have witnessed myself and 

 what I learn from my friends. 



There is indeed one additional observation which I ought not 

 to omit. My first experiment in deep-draining was, as I have 

 already mentioned, on a field of 7 acres. That small field was 

 separated only by a hedge from a much larger field, which had 

 previously been drained according to the shallow system by drains 

 30 inches deep and at intervals of 18 feet. Nothing could be 

 better executed than the drains in that field ; and the soil and 

 subsoil (as I knew by analysis) were precisely similar to those in 

 the adjoining field which had been drained 4 feet deep and at 

 very wide intervals. I happened to be at home soon after the fall 

 of very heavy rains. I myself saw the deep drains begin to pour 

 out water from their main drain before the same occurred in the 

 shallow-drained field ; and subsequently I saw that the shallow 

 drains ceased running long before the deep ones. 



I felt that it was due to Mr. Parkes, and due also to the 

 farming world in general, that I should make known what has 

 been my practice, with its results, and what also has been that of 

 some of my friends. 



We need not be alarmed by the apprehensions intimated by 

 Mr. B. Webster. He fears that deep drains, though efficient at 



