Trunk Drainage. 
13 
3. Ivjunj hy Flooding to Arable Land. 
Altliougli the lands injured for want of a more cfTcctual trunk 
drainage are principally under grass, there is a considerable 
extent of tirable dispersed through the low grounds visited seldom 
enough by the waters to make its original conversion to tillage 
feasible, yet so frequently as to prevent a good system of hus- 
bandry from taking possession. Large breadtlis of ground are 
annually subjected to the saturation of winter floods which wash 
out the farmer's manure, and counteract all the good results of 
his ploughings and scarifyings ; — feeding the watei-grass and 
other moisture-loving weeds which uneradicably establish them- 
selves ; preventing all possibility of eating off green food or 
roots ; delaying seed-time ; and then often stopping the rise of 
the young and generally yellow wheat plant, or lodging and 
destroying the crop when just ripe for the harvest. The number 
of farms yearly losing stooks of com, or flax, having a harvest 
fit for Ccirriage half-immersed in a sudden flood, if all noted 
down throughout the numerous valleys when the losses happen, 
would form, I suspect, an astounding and ruinous list. But, 
after all, it is not so much the actual casualties as the good 
management, extra industry, better yields, and greater annual 
production prevented, which constitute the main grievance. 
Cattle driven by a flush of water to some isolated spot of ground ; 
sheep drowned and carried off, or wedged into the hedges by the 
fresh-wafer tide ; labourers fishing up roots or sheaves into 
boats ; are common objects in some tracts open to inundation : 
but the positive calamities involved in these miserable and pre- 
posterous items of husbandry bear but a small proportion to the 
negative loss to farmers, workmen, landowners, and to the entire 
community, by the non-application of a soil generally prolific to a 
safer and more prosperous use. This point will appear more 
forcibly from a consideration of our next head, — 
4. Injury hy Stoppage or Prevention of Under-drainage. 
On by far the larger portion of the low-lying grounds con- 
cerned in our inquiry, subsoil under-drainage, I apprehend, is at > 
present totally impossible. Wherever adventurous tenants, or 
landlords complaisantly liberal, may have buried pipes beneath 
overflowed lands, it is certain that the drains, if laid at reasonable 
depth, must work at a maximum of disadvantage ; the river- water 
being often at a higher level than their outlet ends or receiving 
main-ditches for a long time before and after the period of actual 
flood ; and during this period the water is not only soaking 
through the surface soil, but entering freely into the subsoil 
along the very conduits prepared for taking it away. At any 
