On reducing the Cost of permanent Drainage. 127 
own tilery. I refer to pipes of an inch bore, a size sufficiently 
large for all the parallel or general drains in most descriptions of 
land from which surface-water alone— that is rain-water falling 
on it — has to be removed. In cases where land is wetted by 
springs, the bore of the pipes used must necessarily be larger, 
and adapted to the quantity of water to be conveyed away in each 
particular case. This will augment the cost of drainage in soils 
of certain texture, though not in all : as it may happen — and I 
have met with many such instances — that a single spring, though 
small in itself, has saturated a whole field ; and a single drain, 
placed at sufficient depth, has laid the whole of that field dry. 
There is another condition of things which materially affects 
the cost of drainage : viz., the size of the fields, and the nature of 
the boundary fences and outfalls. I am at present about to exe- 
cute the drainage of two estates, in one of which each field, 
ranging in size from about 10 to 25 acres, has a deep ditch or a 
running stream at the foot of ever}- slope, so that not a single car- 
rier or main drain will have to be laid down. Few other than 
inch-bore pipes will there be requisite. In the other estate there 
are but few read}' -made ditches, so that covered carrier-drains, 
proportionate in size to the number of the parallel drains empty- 
ing into them, and to the distance of the outfall, will have to be 
constructed. All other circumstances, therefore, being alike, the 
drainage of the latter estate will be the more costly. 
These different circumstances — the ever-varying character of 
soil as respects its power of transmitting water, which must govern 
the judicious drainer in his choice of depth and distance — with 
other conditions, such as the relativ3 hardness of the subsoils to 
be excavated — necessarily render it impossible to assign one cost 
as an universal rule in drainage. The instances of cost given in 
the Table comprehend a variety of soils and subsoils, the texture 
of which occasioned very different wages to be given for opening 
out the trenches. The pickaxe had to be resorted to in Nos. 6, 
7, 9 ; whereas Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, exhibit the usual charge in the 
district for excavating uniform, or, as you well call them, honest 
clavs at the depths cited. 
I have preferred to quote instances of drainage as effected by 
tenant-farmers rather than work executed under my own direction, 
in the belief that more satisfactory evidence of cost will be thereby 
afforded to the agriculturist ; and because it shows that what one 
man has done, another may do, and that without having recourse 
to professional drainers. The drainage performed by the tenant- 
farmers whose names and addresses arc given cannot, as far as 
I am aware, be improved upon, except that those who have drained 
at 3 feet deep would now be urged, by their experience, to lay 
their pipes at 4 feet deep, in preference, wherever practicable. 
