140 
Draimijc of Wliittlcsea Merc. 
powers of tlio cnfjlno and pump, and it resulted in perfect con- 
fidence beine: ff^'t tl'-'it it was master of the situation. 
It was reckoned that 1000 acres were covered again with water 
to a depth of 2 feet 6 inches, and tliat if the pump coukl raise 
20,000 gallons a minute, it would take twenty-three days inces- 
sant pumping to clear oflTthat amount. This calculation proved 
correct, and in little more than three weeks the land, but cer- 
tainly not frrra Jirma, was again everywhere visible. 
The banks having been repaired and fortified, the work of 
reclamation, and preparing for the cultivation of the soil, was 
actively resumed. The completion of the main dyke, leading 
from a point in the high land, not very far from the present 
Holme Station, 3i- miles long, and averaging 30 feet in Avidth, 
was an arduous undertaking, owing to the treacherous nature of 
the bed of the Mere, through which, for nearly two miles of its 
length, it passed. Frequent slips occurred, and continued to 
•occur long after its first completion. From the main dyke a 
number of smaller dykes branched off, passed through the silty 
bed of the Mere, penetrated into the surrounding bog, and tapping 
it in all directions, brought a never-ending flow of water to be 
discharged by the engine. 
The effect of this network of drains was quicklv visible. The 
bed of the Mere was soon covered with innumerable cracks and 
fissures, deep and wide, so as to make it a matter of no small 
<liflficulty to walk along the surface, while in the suiTounding bog 
the principal effect was tlie speedy consolidation of its crust, which, 
by the end of the first summer afforded, even in those ])laces which 
iiad been long impassaljle, as safe and firm a footing for a man, 
as it now does throughout almost its whole extent for a horse. 
It was no easy matter to reduce the Mere-land into a state to 
receive such seed as should be first sown ; the adhesive condi- 
tion of the surface making it impossible to use horses even when 
shod with boards, if indeed the wide fissures did not render it 
<langerous to trv the experiment. The whole area therefore had 
to be prepared by hand— over the largest part light harrows were 
first drawn by hand — the seed was then sown, and the harrows 
used a second and sometimes a third time, at a cost of about 5s. 
or 6s. per acre. Other parts were dug or forked at an average 
cost of from 25.?. to oOs. per acre. Of such a depth were the 
cracks, that even this process, with all the subsequent operations 
attending the first crop, by no means got rid of these obstinate 
scars, which continued until the cultivation of three or four 
years at length obliterated them. 
Coleseed and Italian ryegrass were the first crops taken. When 
the new land was in its raw and wettest state, the latter did some- 
what better than the former, but as the soil dried the coleseed 
throve better, and in the reclaimed reed-shoals and adjoining 
