426 
Half-a-dozen English Sewage Farms. 
gradually sinking into the drains as it goes. So much of it as 
has not thus sunk awaj may in this way be picked up for re- 
use at least three times between the first and second bricked 
conduits, three or four times between the second and third, and 
ten or eleven times below the third, before it reaches the 
foot of the farm. The water is not, however, sent out thus 
over the whole slope from top to bottom, but is taken from 
one part of the farm to another, according to the requirements 
of the growing crop. Thus it may be employed first in 
watering an area from which Italian rye-grass has just been 
cut, immediately below the head-level conduit. The tail- 
water from this surface may then be conveyed straight down 
the hill, through the syphon-pipe, across the valley, and re- 
appear upon a corresponding area of recentlj- mown Italian 
rye-grass midway of the slope upon the opposite side. This 
was, indeed, the actual arrangement on the day of my visit 
last May ; and I learned that the subsoil-water from the drains 
underneath the first-named sewage plot was also at the same 
time collected and sent across the valley for re-use with the tail- 
water of the surface. The cropping this summer has included 
35 acres of grain crops — 8 of beans, 2 of barley, 16 of wheat, and 
9 of oats ; 10 acres of mangels and swedes ; 30 acres of Italian rye- 
grass, of which 12 had been sown in the autumn of 1874 and 
have now been ploughed up ; 12 had been sown in the autumn of 
1875, and 5 or 6 had been sown this spring. There are also 11 
acres of clover, 1 acre of cabbage, and 25 of old grass-land. 
Mr. Robert Fairbairn, who has been in charge of the farm since 
1869, when it was laid out by the late Mr. J. Lawson, C.E., sells 
large quantities of Italian rye-grass to the horse- and cow-keepers 
of Tunbridge Wells, who come one or two miles with their 
carts and waggons for it, and pay from \bd. a rod for it on the 
ground. That was the price received in Mav for a magnificent 
swathe of grass sown in the autumn of 1875, which was then 
being cut, and the demand seemed likely to overtake the growth 
of the crop, rapid as that had been. During the time of this 
great demand for grass, the 25-acre field of permanent pasture, 
which is also irrigated as it seems to need it, maintains the large 
herd of cattle kept to consume the Italian rye-grass during the 
period of smaller demand. 
The drainage — ordinary agricultural drainage — which is being 
continually corrected and improved, is not even yet perfectly 
satisfactory. The minor drains vary from 3 to 4 feet deep, and 
2 to 3 rods apart, and the main drains deliver their water into 
the sewage-carriers again ; and thus nothing leaves tlie iarni 
without having had several opportunities of feeding growing 
plants, or of being itself thoroughly oxidised and defalcated. 
