10 
Tninli Draiiiar/e. 
bour's land which is enjoying a natural drainage, as any occupier 
of open meadow look for regular manurings from a capricious- 
river. If streams would swell over their bordering meadows only 
at suitable times, and then simply moisten them with a suc- 
cession of trickling floods, retiring at intervals to allow the water 
to filtrate downward through the subsoil again into tlie water- 
course, and thus act both as an intermittent " carrier " and 
" drain ; " then we should obtain all the advantage of artificial 
meadows without their costliness. Or, if our large rivers were 
so controlled by works as to insure a due time, number, and 
measure of floodings, their border lands would then be converted 
into vast ranges of very rich and profitable water-meadow. The 
actual state of these grounds, however, is what we might expect 
from their complete dependence upon the fickleness of weather 
— being liable to inundation at any time after a smart fall of 
rain or a partial thaw. The quality as well as the weight of 
the herbage is greatly inferior to that of properly-irrigated grass, 
is also irregular in growth, and looked upon altogether as a crop 
speculated or gambled for — a cheaply- won crop in a good season, 
but a matter of hazard entirely disunited from the common, 
routine of cultivation. 
Occasionally the amount of produce in hay is really very 
great — not simply from the irrigating agency of the rivers, but 
in a great measure from the direct additions brought to the soil 
in the earthy and organic matters deposited by the water. Our 
river meadows generally consist of alluvial and peaty deposits,, 
the joint accumulation of sediment from the floods and the de- 
caying vegetation that, in constantly renewed succession, grows 
upon it. It is by the margin of rivers which flow through 
valleys of clay, and marl, and sandstone, bringing with them the 
detritus washed by abrading brooks from hills of soft and crum- 
bling strata, that our principal expanses of meadow are found. 
In the upper and more rapid portions of their course the streams 
are thick and muddy with their winter spoils ; they become 
purer when the low lands are passed, and bear only a trifling- 
contribution toward the alluvial bai's forming in their estuaries. 
Expanding over broad valleys, the Trent, Ouse, Nene, and most 
of our other rivers, have quietly dropped their slime ; at times, 
manuring, at times destroying rushes, mosses, and grasses, until, 
in the course of ages, we have broad bands of meadow more or 
less elevated above the ordinary level of the current, with a more 
or less porous soil of richly fertile composition. To the mineral 
and vegetable accumulations are also added the animal and 
vegetable matters so largely formed in all sluggish waters ; the 
contributions of countless drains and ditches, bringing saline 
and other ingredients, in solution or suspension, from richly- 
