Trunk Drainage. 
16 
and I'crtilizfd by every flood that comes over them ; while on 
lands contiguous or perhaps just on the otlier side of the river, 
where a chiy soil retains the wet, exactly tlie contrary effect is 
prochiced. 
The consequences of the want of subsoil-drainage — as mani- 
fested on all the lands of this character with which I am familiar 
— are that the herbage is more or less of a coarse, sour, and 
sedgy quality ; the constant wetness of the earth creating a 
suitable habitat for marsh or bog plants, and banishing nearly 
two-thirds of the better varieties of pasture grasses. I know of 
one meadow of loamy soil in a valley comprising thousands of 
acres more, in which some holes dug 10 inches square — some 
weeks after a flood had passed away — began immediately to fill 
with water, and this in the course of a night stood 7 inches deep, 
thus showing the inability of the roots of the grasses to take up 
nourisliment, the soil being too retentive of cold and moisture to 
impart it to them. Thus a great extent of meadow-grounds 
which have enough of natural fertility and richness to become first- 
class grazing-lands under proper drainage, fatting a seventy-stone 
ox per acre in summer, and keeping 2 sheep per acre through the 
winter, — and worth a rental of 3Z. lO*. an acre, — are now scarcely 
remunerative at 1/. per acre. Where the meadows are chiefly 
saved for mowing, and in occasional years yield considerable 
weights of fodder, — enticing rather high bids per acre from the 
eager arable farmers, — the hay is coarse and strawy, and rarely 
worth more than three-fourths the price of good upland hay. 
But one of the most serious injuries arising from the liability to 
floods at any season after a heavy rain, and from the saturated, 
water-logged state of the land, is the rot in sheep. Great caution 
is at all times needed in stocking the pastures : in a wet season 
this cannot be done at all ; and, in ordinary years, there is fre- 
quent loss from sheep eating herbage nourished by the stagnant 
water. 
Then, as regards the Arable-land of these valleys, it is suffi- 
cient to state in one word that, with under-drainage rendered 
either impossible or nugatory, the soil is noxiously charged with 
a greater volume of water than it would naturally absorb ; a con- 
stantly low temperature is maintained both at the surface and to 
a considerable depth ; the power of the sun is neutralized ; the 
aeration of the soil precluded ; tender plants decayed, and vigorous 
ones turned sickly ; all the farmer's efforts and expenses bereft 
of any adequate return. 
One of the greatest evils, however, of the inability of grounds 
little elevated above their contiguous river to obtain a subsoil- 
drainage, is the hindrance thus opposed to the conversion of 
grass into tillage. Why are our large watercourses so generally 
