16 
Trunk Drainage. 
bordered vvitli meadow and pasture ? Not because of the peculiar 
adaptation of the soil to grass-farming ; not because of its fine 
fottening qualities, its suitability for breeding sheep or cattle, its 
unequalled cheeses or otlier dairy produce. No ; it continues 
unbroken and unimproved because it is insecure. Tillage-hus- 
bandry can no more live amongst the ravages of inundation than 
it could in olden time among the wars of the Roses, — which 
caused its decline in England. If our meadows have never been 
used otherwise than they are, this forms no objection to their 
better appropriation in the future. Excepting some tracts which 
will doubtless make excellent grazing-land with an improved 
drainage, farmers in the river-vales know very well that a large 
proportion of their poor grass would be far more profitable if 
dried and turned under the plough. Nay, they have numberless 
examples of such pastures lying barely 3 feet above the water- 
level, which, when pierced and tapped with 30-inch-deep drains, 
and cultivated, and cropped, have yielded in one year more vege- 
table food than during many past years put together. But 
among the predilections engendered by habit and ancestorial 
usage is that of the wet-vale farmer for his greensward ; for in 
too many cases it requires a troublesome reiteration of argument 
to persuade occupiers into an approval of the change referred to. 
Just as the Bedford-Level farmers said that they should be ruined 
without winter floods — because their Aveak land, laid down for 
six years to grass-seeds, needed continual moisture — so these men 
affirm that overflow in moderation is the making of their fields, 
and deprecate any attempt to prevent it. But the Fen-men talk 
differently now ; they ridicule the idea of merely making the 
best of a bad situation ; and having dismissed their floods they 
at once opened up a more profitable mode of culture, and would 
not relinquish their present rich arable to return to their once 
famous pasture and hay. Mr. Acland, in his Report on Somer- 
aetsJdre, gives a striking instance of the sort of feeling which pre- 
dominates too generally upon the banks of our rivers. In the 
basin drained by the Parret, he says, there are thousands of acres 
of grass-land of the coarsest description, some capable of the 
highest order of arable cultivation, but at present unimproved ; 
because some occupiers, anxious for a supply of water for their 
stock in summer, look with mistrust upon all plans of deepening 
outfalls ; and others, having a few shillings' worth of grass left 
on their land at the fall of the year, are opposed to letting in the 
thick water which is of importance as a natural manure. 
I have hitherto confined my observations to rivers and their 
valleys, because of their prime importance ; but the subject may 
conduct us into minute and interminable ramification, — the 
brooks, watercourses, and ditches, which are all organized branches 
