584 Abstract Bejioii of Agricultural Discussions. 
February, soon after a heavy rainfall, hounds ran across it ; and in 
riding over it himself he was delighted to find that it was quite sound. 
'1 he other day he received a letter from his bailiff, who stated that he 
had not found the wheat at all damaged. 
He wished now to put a question to Mr. Denton. During the last 
fortnight he had been staying in a part of Middlesex where he was 
very much struck with the ' state of the grass lands. He had always 
supposed that there was no county where more or better hay was 
grown than in the neighboui'hood of London ; but he now considered 
it perfectly marvellous how anything at all could be grown, so satu- 
rated was the land with water. He was told that all the farmers who 
were great hay-gi-owers said that it was of no use to drain the land 
xleep ; that, if they drained deep, the land baked, or caked, so much in 
the dry season, that all its grass-bearing powers were completely 
destroyed. He should like to hear what Mr. Denton had to say on 
that point. 
As regarded the constant supply of water to be obtained from the 
:system of di-ainage which had been described, he would say that his 
own experience did not support that view. Some of his di'ains cut 
last year, which yielded a great deal of water at first, had since very 
nearly run themselves dry. Mr. Denton's idea seemed to be that there 
was a kind of perennial supply from drains of that natui-e. Whether 
that was so or not in other cases than his own he could not say. In 
his own case they were now putting in not more than a third of the 
number of drains that they did before ; and, considering the way in 
which the drains dried the test-holes, he was inclined to think that 
€ven now they were put too closely, especially for gi-ass land. Their 
■depth was not less than 4 feet. In the clay land none of the drains 
were more than 4 feet deep, and they were 8 or 9 yards apart. As to 
the drainage of j)orous or free soils, Mr. Denton was undoubtedly 
right in iirinciple. What would be the effect of deep di-ainage in the 
case of strong clay soils, was a matter on which he felt some doubt. 
Mr. Holland said he had a most difiicult clay to deal with. It was 
what Mr. Denton called a corrugated soil, and draining could only be 
d( ne by a very slow process indeed, the subsoil itself being more or 
less corrugated. In draining they were compelled to follow the 
direction of the furrows, which, as the result of continual ploughing 
for ages, were very frequently in the shape of the letter S ; still they 
did drain, and drain deeply. The fui-rows were in some cases 40 or 
50 feet apart, and drainage at such an interval on clay soils is neces- 
sarily imperfect. Fortunately, however, deep cultivation, and more 
particularly steam ploughing, enabled them to bring down the eleva- 
tions in the land more rapidly than it could possibly be done by horse- 
power, and by degrees they were making the land perfectly flat. When 
the cultivators of the soil had thus been enabled to level all that their 
ancestors were so careful in raising, the drainage might be perfected 
by the introduction of an intervening drain. Ho had tried, for the 
sake of experiment, the effect of draining about G acres in straight 
lines, without regard to the ridge or fiuTow : it was a complete 
failure, lie did it with great care, going deeper thau ho should 
