510 



On Draining. 



are, many whose scepticism and prejudicial love for the beaten 

 track, be it ever so toilsome and slippery, will not admit of their 

 crediting the practicability of the drainage of clay lands being 

 rendered so thoroughly effective as these remarks indicate ; but 

 since we must feel, from past experience and the evidence of 

 practical results in things of much more improbable accomplish- 

 ment, how mistaken we were, I venture to think that none of those 

 I am addressing will be found in that state of doubt. 



Experience and observation have convinced me that in the 

 drainage of retentive subsoils it is quite impossible to insure a 

 proper uniformity of dryness over the entire surface if the drains 

 are at too great intervals. Additional depth will not in these 

 cases compensate for additional distance ; and it must always 

 be borne in mind that the safe side is the best, for nothing but a 

 satisfactory result can attend the more frequent, whilst only a 

 doubtful or protracted effect may follow the more distant; and in 

 a season like the present practically render the work of little or 

 no use. 1 know some land which in the autumn of 1847 was 

 pretended to be drained in a masterly manner, with the drains 

 4J feet deep and 60 feet apart, but the work being completed at 

 too late a period to be sown with wheat, it was reserved for spring 

 sowing : as ill -fortune, however, would have it, the spring of 

 this year was so unpropitious that there never was a long- 

 enough interval from rain to allow these drains to act so as to 

 dry the land sufficiently to be worked ; it consequently remained 

 in fallow, and it may be questionable whether it is even yet sown. 

 See therefore the serious loss to all parties from such a misappli- 

 cation of deep and distant drains. For an instance of the proper 

 application of deep drainage, we may refer, amongst numerous 

 other examples, to that on the estate of Sir Samuel Crompton, at 

 Wood End, near Thirsk, where one or two independent drains of 

 from 7 to 10 feet deep, are laying perfectly dry a very large 

 area of land on either side of them. The subsoil is a sandy 

 gravel, into which, as into a basin, the water from the adjoining 

 hill percolated and lodged, oosing to the surface as the supply 

 kept up the pressure, until by one of these drains an outlet was 

 made through the side of the basin and the whole of this subsoil 

 immediately became an active natural drain, and the land con- 

 verted into fine turnip, wheat, and barley soil. 



But in confirmation of the general adoption of deeper and 

 more distant drains, we are told that if land of a retentive cha- 

 racter be drained at 4 feet and 3 feet deep, the 4 feet drains will 

 be the first to emit water; and under certain circumstances this 

 may be the case, which has given plausibility to some very falla- 

 cious reasoning for the efficacy of deep drains under all circum- 

 stances. I could enumerate instances, where land has been drained 

 at 3 feet deep and 30 feet apart, of very great improvement 



