Some of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868. 
39 
multiply the quantity of feeding' ground to which the roots of 
plants have access, and on the quantity and wealth of which 
fertility depends. But, be the explanation what it may, the evi- 
dence is unquestionable that the drought of 1868 had more 
injurious influence on soils whose stores of food for plants lay 
within the shallow layer to which their usually wet condition 
had confined the cultivator, than on soils where deep land-drain- 
age had both naturally spread the fertilising matter throughout 
soil and subsoil, and enabled a still more thorough artificial 
distribution of it by deeper cultivation. 
The following report by Mr. Paget, of Ruddington Grange, 
near Nottingham, may be taken for an example. He says : — 
"I have had a ftivourahle opportunity this year of noticing the effect of 
draining. There is hero a district divided by a stream for about four miles. On 
the right side of the brooli the land is well ch-aincd, while on the left it is wet 
and undrained. The drainage was completed in some parts forty years since, 
while in otliers it was only commenced five j'cars ago. The district comprises 
both arable and grass land. The soil of the arable land is generally gravelly 
loam resting on a marl, and affords examples both of shallow and of deep 
draining. Where there is no under water except at a great depth, and the soil 
is too im23ervious to allow the rain water to escape with sufiScieut rapidity, 
tiles were put in forty-five years ago, chiefly at a depth of 30 inches, but 
occasionally at 4 feet. They have remained perfectly efScient, and I have 
never discovered any advantage in the greater depth. In other parts drains 
have been put in at a depth of from 4 to 6 feet, — some of them by Elkington, 
others at different times during the last forty years. These drains carry off 
the overflow of a ' water table ' * supplied from below, so that moistm^e is 
always within reach of the deep rooted plants, such as mangold, beans, and 
clover. The crops have in no case suffered from the drainage, whether 
shallow or deep. The soil at the end of July was moist at a few inches depth, 
in the mangold, bean, and cabbage plots ; and the corn stacks in the drained 
district contrast favourably with those in the undrained. But where the 
water table was only a few feet from the surface, and the plants were always 
within reach of sufficient moisture, the crops were very good; the mangold 
attaining 35, and in one instance 45 tons to the acre, and the beans having 
a fair quantity of straw. The meadow land is chiefly a deposit from brooks 
descending Irom hills of the lias and red sandstone formations, and is a clayey 
loam. It is naturally very wet, but has been drained at depths varying from 
4 to 8 feet. No amount of rain renders it unfit for stock unless accompanied 
by a flood; and twelve hours after the subsidence of a flood there is no trace 
of it except in its deposit. On comparing these meadows with the undrained 
grass on tlie other side of the brook, I believe that where the land had 
been very recently drained, and consequently the grasses proper to dry land 
were not fully established, they did not afford quite so much 'keep' as the 
corresponding undrained land ; but as soon as the rain fell in August the 
advantage was on the side of the drained land. Those meadows which had 
been long drained had the advantage throughout, and where mowed, produced 
* This term is no doubt intended to convey the idea (probably the fact), that 
there is at a varying depth, within or below all soils, a surface, up to which water 
stands in a free and liquid form, and above which it is drawn by capillary attrac- 
tion, moistening without wetting, being mingled with air as well as earth. — J.C.M 
