228 
Village Sanitary Economy. 
the command of the lands above, as well as a preponderating 
influence in the village to be supplied ; and in such cases the 
operation would be so simple, requiring only a pipe to connect 
the stream with the village street, that no explanation of the 
mode of effecting it can be required. And even where compen- 
sation may have to be paid to the owners of riparian rights for 
the abstraction of water, it is not impossible that a village may 
be economically supplied by such means. 
But the extension of under-drainage has opened up a source of 
supply of a kindred character which is not open to the doubts 
and objections attending any interference with ancient water- 
rights, and the quality of the water may be even better than that 
obtained from a running stream. Such is the case where, in the 
operation of draining saturated free soils above villages, a con- 
stant flow of water has been or may be gained, and for the 
conduct of which to the head of the village physical facilities 
exist. The writer has been enabled, in carrying out works of 
under-drainage on several estates, to originate a constant run of 
water from land which had been previously saturated, and had 
given off its excess of wetness by evaporation. In some few 
cases the advantage has been turned to account, and an immea- 
surable benefit conferred on the village poor, who have since 
continued to take their daily supply of water from the outlets. 
The discharge from waterlogged free soils is frequently constant, 
when the wet lands form part of large beds in which the rain- 
water from adjacent surfaces is conserved ; and as this is the 
result of under-drainage, which interferes only with undefined 
sources of supply, there cannot possibly arise objections of the 
same character as those which attend any interference with the 
ancient rights of defined streams. The villages that could be 
thus supplied with the best water are not few, and it is remark- 
able that, with such an advantage within reach, efforts are not 
more frequently made to obtain it. Without discussing here 
any question connected with under-drainage and its benefits to 
the occupiers of land, it may be admitted that all that is neces- 
sary in dealing with free soils is to give motion to water which 
would otherwise rest stagnant within them ; and that the fewer 
drains that will set this stagnant water in motion and reduce 
evaporation the better it is for the water-supply of the countr}', 
inasmuch as the fewest number of drains that will effect the 
desired object will secure the longest-continued discharge. If 
this be a correct view, drainage affords a means of supply to 
villages and farm homesteads in the simplest form ; and instances 
exist in which not only has a supply so originated been furnished 
for domestic uses, but it has been used as motive-power for 
pumping or raising water by ram or turbine, and doing sundry 
