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XVII I. — On Draining. By Josiah Parkes, Esq., Consult- 
ing Engineer to the Royal Agricultural S(jciety. 
[Read before the Society at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.] 
My Lord Portman and Gentlemen, 
In fulfilment of the wish of the Council of the Society, and 
in anticipation that I, in common with its members, shall benefit by 
the remarks and larger knowledge of others, I have undertaken to 
appear before the present assemblage of agriculturists with the 
view of illustrating some of the principles and rules of practice in 
the art of land-draining. By so doing I do not think that I, or 
others who may follow me, shall be open to the charge of pre- 
sumption, inasmuch as we may doubt if there lives the man, 
having acquaintance with the climate, soil, and agriculture of 
Britain, who would have the hardihood to dispute the assertion 
that drainage is beneficial, or the fact that vast districts in our 
island still require to be relieved from an injurious amount of 
water stagnant in its soil and stagnating too near its surface. I 
apprehend, therefore, that I may commence this paper by assum- 
ing — by taking for granted — unphilosophical and inadmissible as 
such a procedure would be in a doubtful case — that land-drainage 
is an art and a practice of acknowledged value and necessity ; and 
that we are met here not to dispute about the propriety of drain- 
ing wet lands, but simply to discuss the means of rendering the 
art of drainage efficient and economical, and to impart to each 
other our respective knowledge as to the modes of arriving at those 
desirable ends. I further apprehend that it should be our course 
to state, with precision, such practice as we may have severally 
pursued, its effects, and the causes to which the good or ill-success 
of the particular practice may, in our opinion, be ascribed. I 
imagine that we shall, in this way, best fulfil the object of the 
Council in inviting this discussion, for I subscribe heartily to the 
doctrine enforced in the Report of our Council to the general 
meeting in May last, viz., that " a clear knowledge of cause and 
effect, under given circumstances, and a detail of the particular 
cases to which such knowledge is applicable is, in their opinion, 
the only safe science to be recommended to their members." 
There is nothing contained in this declaration of the Council to 
discourage experiment, as has been feared and suggested to me by 
some ot its members — from which circumstance partly I refer to 
it — since " safe science," if the term has a meaning, is simply ex- 
pressive of that determinate state of knowledge which is founded 
on facts ; and we cannot obtain facts but through experiment, ob- 
servation, and experience. Let me mention a definition of science 
as propounded by that illustrious traveller and philosopher, Alex- 
