44 
Agricultural Progress and 
irregular width of the lands make it necessary to neglect them 
altogether, and he lays out his drains 10 yards apart, having 
regard to the best obtainable fall, mentally resolving gradually to 
reduce the height of the lands until the whole can be brought to 
a level surface. 
The third and last attempt at drainage that had been made 
on the farm was in a field of pure unsophisticated clay. Both 
tenant and agent were convinced it would not answer, but some 
meddlesome friend of the owner had insisted on digging a hole 
in the field, which, though .covered with a flag on which a sub- 
stantial coating of clay had been well trodden down, was unac- 
countably found after a time to contain water ; and it was dif- 
ficult to say why water shouldn't find its way into a drain as 
•well as into a hole. So a few acres were to be tried, as the cost 
would not be great, for everybody knew that it was of no use to ' 
drain clay deep, and inch pipes would be quite sufficient to carry 
off all the water there would be. In order, however, effectually 
to stop the mouths of all objectors, a small portion was to be done 
4 feet deep. The lands were 18 feet wide, so a few drains were 
put in at a depth of 4 feet up every alternate furrow, and the 
remainder up each furrow at 2 feet deep. Both did good at first, 
but where the drains were in alternate furrows, and therefore 12 
yards apart, the intermediate furrows held water all the winter. 
The shallow drains were the first to show sj'mptoms of failure, 
and after a year or two deteriorated rapidly. In a few more years 
even the deep drains became less efficient, and the triumph of the 
anti-drainers was complete. 
But the farm was now in possession of a man who was never 
satisfied until he could ascertain the cause of failure, and he saw 
at a glance that the deep drains were too wide apart. The slow- 
ness with which water percolates through really strong clay is 
such that wide drains cannot in ordinary seasons remove the sur- 
plus water of one rainfall before another comes. He therefore 
resolved to drain this land at six yards' interval, and as the cost of 
deep drains at this width would be heavy, he determined to put 
his tiles 3 feet deep, considering a bed of dry soil of that depth 
sufficient for any of our ordinary crops. On examining the 
old drains to ascertain the cause of their deterioration and ineffi- 
ciency, he found that though in general well laid, there were 
places where the ends of adjoining tiles were not exactly on the 
same level or in the same line of direction, either in consequence 
of a little carelessness in the filling in, the occurrence of a large 
stone which it would have been laborious to remove or work 
round, or the removal of a smaller stone whose bed had not been 
sufficiently solidly filled up. In these cases the narrow channel 
afforded by inch pipes was sufficiently interrupted to check the 
