the Royal Agricultural Society. 
15 
flow of the water, and cause a deposit of silt, which eventually 
became cemented by a ferruginous deposit, and permanently 
reduced the effective width of the pipe. In the shallow drains 
these results were much aggravated by their nearness to the sur- 
face. A short drought was sufficient to open wide fissures down 
to the tiles, and the first heavy shower washed so much fine soil 
into the drains between the joints of the tiles that the run of water 
was unable to remove the deposit, and the action of the drains 
from that time became more and more feeble and ineffective. 
There were two modes of avoiding these evils, viz., the use 
of collars or of larger pipes. He found that 2-inch pipes could 
be obtained at little more cost than inch pipes and collars, and 
after duly balancing their respective merits, the tendency of 
drainage-water on clay land to form a hard ochreous deposit, de- 
cided him in favour of the wider conduit, using collars only 
where a piece of boggy ground or running sand made it necessary 
to take additional precautions against silting-up. In such places 
it was found to be desirable to use long collars, making them 
overlap more or less, according to the urgency of the case. 
Whilst planning his drainage operations, our farmer was not 
content to have his ideas bounded by what he saw on the surface, 
but followed with his mental vision the great ramification of roots 
upon which all plants depend for their stability and nourishment. 
He considered the description of materials collected in Nature's 
great laboratory, the decaying vegetation, the decomposing 
manure, and the various combinations of mineral elements. He 
knew that if a supply of water were long withheld, all the 
elaborate subterranean machinery would be brought to a stand ; 
and on the other hand, that if water were always present, new 
and injurious combinations would take the place of the natural 
and healthy cookery for which the apparatus was designed. But 
when once the stagnant water was removed from below, then 
each successive shower would distribute to the greedy rootlets 
their ready-formed food, at the same time that it prepared more 
by bringing together the elements of nutrition which lay around, 
only waiting for this connecting link in order to work afresh 
at the task of elaborating the supply of materials for the growth 
of the leaves and stems above. Nor was this all — stagnant 
air is as bad as stagnant water, and the frequent descent of 
rain through the soil is required to displace from its pores the 
vitiated air, to be quickly renewed by a supply fresh from 
the atmosphere, which is as necessary for the healthy under- 
ground growth of vegetation as for the proper action of the lungs 
of animals. Arrangements were therefore made for the thorough 
drainage of the farm, on the principle that it was an object 
worthy of the utmost skill of the husbandman to secure as much 
