12 
Trunk Drainage. 
terrible losses, — in the destruction of botb live stock and forag-e. 
The many thousands of acres deluged by sudden storms during 
the past few summers have attracted public attention, and, what- 
ever course may be pursued with winter inundations, these tracts 
ought imperatively to seek for relief from disasters which recur 
with increasing speed, and with a severity augmenting by reason 
of improved upland drainage. Ilmj-making is a hazardous and 
anxious business to the grass-farmer quite often enough without 
the dread of overflow being added to the watching of the clouds. 
How can we estimate the damage sustained in the various localities 
indicated in our introductory sketch of disasters from the floating 
away of their hay ? For Ijcside the irreparable loss of their 
winter provender, we must allow (it may be) for the necessitated 
and therefore disadvantageous sale of sheep and beasts whose 
food has been stolen by the flood ; for the frustration of the 
farmer's plans, the upset of his calculations, and embarrassment 
in many ways appreciable only by those who have been unfor- 
tunately immersed in similar difficulties. Then the uncut grass, 
and the hay in swathe not washed bodily away, are so sodden, 
impoverished, divested of nutriment, and soiled by the alluvial 
deposit from the waters, as to be totally worthless not only for 
fodder but even for manure. The aftermath is greatly damaged. 
The flood coming in warm weather injures its growth by pro- 
ducing that fermentation found so quickly to wither the herbage 
under artificial irrigation ; and a mingled gritty sediment is left 
behind, which renders the pasture imfit lor stock. After a flood 
there are often found adhering to the grass closely compacted 
filaments of a conferva, which, with a quantity of mud, constitutes 
the scum of meadows subject to inundation : in the autumn of 
1839 several acres of the meadow land near Farringdon, in 
Berksh ire, were covered with this fibrous substance, and portions 
of it were spun and woven as a matter of curiosity. The latter- 
math is thus rendered useless when it would be so valuable for 
sheep and cattle that have been grazing the upland pastures 
through the summer ; and as the long grass left in consequence 
upon the meadows is detrimental to the growth of the succeeding 
spring, farmers are sometimes known to mow it and carry it off 
the land, valueless though it is, to prevent the injury. The 
eddish or aftermath is generally destroyed by early autumnal 
floods four or five times oftener than the hay itself is thus caught. 
In the summer season, too, the public at large experience the 
evil effects of the overflow most fearfully, in its deleterious influ- 
ence upon, the sanitary condition of the atmosphere. The noxious 
odours from the subsiding pools and washes annoy the contiguous 
inhaljitants, and a fervid sun exhales miasmata little less poi- 
sonous than those rising from the swamps and jungles of the 
torrid zone. 
