426 
Faryning of Dorsetshire. 
material work is in the hands of old and obstinate men, who will 
not swerve from the directions of their forefathers, and who have 
a most profound contempt for that modern innovator, the spirit- 
level. I was told of one of these ancient worthies who cut his 
trenches by no other guide than the one eye he possessed, and 
who left in a trench with a 5-feet fall a " belly " of 5 inches. 
When the error was shown him, he declared " it didn't a mossel 
matter ; all that wei-e wanted was a fall, and that he'd a-got." 
The Wilts and Somerset Railway has given some of the agricul- 
turists of Dorset the opportunity of obtaining a little scientific 
advice in these matters, and I know one farmer who has profited 
so well by the hints he thus obtained, that he now takes Ids own 
spirit-level, and himself sets out his drains and his water-meads 
with all the success that could be desired for so good a pupil. 
Tlie choking of pipe- drains has led some very good farmers 
to doubt whether this description of drain will be found to 
answer ultimately upon their farms. On the greensand, and 
also on the heaths, the water is largely impregnated with oxide 
of iron, a deposition of which often chokes the smaller pipes. 
A remedy iov this has been often found in pipes of a larger 
bore, and where the spring head has been boggy it has been cut 
down into, and a large separate drain carried to the nearest out- 
fall. On very light soils inconvenience Las been occasioned hy 
the sand working its way between the pipe-joints. A plan l.as 
been devised to remedy this by the aid of small pits sunk at 
intervals under the joints, but it has not been long enough in 
operation to enable those who have tried it to report definitively 
on its efficiency. Mr. Saunders, in draining some barren heath- 
land near Warmwell, finding a similar evil, applied the opposite 
remedy, and stopped the mischief with thin parings of turf 
placed over the joints where the run of sand was found. Mr, 
Saunders finds his drains run the freer and the land dry mor.e 
rapidly where a cross drain at the top of the field has admitted a 
free current of air through all the pipes. In boggy patches a 
hole is dug, filled with faggots, and brought into communication 
with the line of drains on eitlier side ; the w ater rises up through 
the faggots, and is drawn off through the drains, and thus circles 
of land are dried. Serious stoppages of drains have been 
occasioned by the penetration of masses of vegetable fibres, 
which have been found matted together as hard as the limb of a 
tree. About five years ago Mr. Digby had a large drain choked 
in this way by a mass of roots " like a fox's tail," and Mr. Pope 
had a similar occurrence in the pipe which conveyed water to 
his house at Mapperton. In tlie former case the genus of the 
intruder was not ascertained, but in the latter it was found to be 
the root of a greengage tree. 
