254 
On Draining. 
heavens, and weakens the bog nothing at all, and to the end it 
pretends is of no use." Finally, he describes, admitting such a 
work to be more expensive, but more efficacious and durable, the 
use of deep covered drains, placing at the bottoms of the trenches 
"good green faggots, willow, alder, elm, or thorne," or in firmer 
stuff, " pebble stones or flint stones, and so fill up the bottom of 
thy trench about fifteen inches high, and take thy turf and plant 
it as aforesaid, the green soard downwards, being cut very fit for 
the trench, so as it may joyne close as it is layd down, and then 
having covered it all over with earth, and made it even as the 
other ground, waite and expect a wonderful effect through the 
blessing of God." He prescribes also, in all cases excepting for 
water meadows, the driving the drains right up and down the 
fall of the land. In this account of draining water meadows and 
swampy lands, one cannot but recognise very sound principles, 
and these are represented by Captain Blith as having been put 
into practice by himself, copied by others, and as having raised 
the value and rent of land so treated from a few shillings to two, 
three, and four pounds per acre. There is no indication in this 
work of any systematic plan of under-draining generally wet and 
retentive soils, but the author seems, nevertheless, to have been 
thoroughly penetrated with its importance, referring to the " in- 
credible expense " it would occasion, and he prescribes in this 
difficulty the ridging up wet clay lands, or the laying them in 
balks. As no instance or " precedent," as Captain Blith terms it, 
of any general under-draining is referred to by him, we may, I 
think, conclude that this practice has had its origin within the 
la,st two hundred years, struggling onwards to perfection through 
the difficulties presented by the absence or expenslveness of good 
materials wherewith to form permanent water-conduits. 
In the course of my operations as a drainer, I have met with, 
or heard of, so many instances of swamj) drainage executed pre- 
cisely according to the plans of this author, and sometimes in a 
superior manner — the conduits being formed of walling stone, 
yet at a period long antecedent to the memory of the living — that 
I am disposed to consider the practice of deep drainage to have 
originated with Captain Blith, and to liave been preserved by 
imitators in various jiarts of the country ; since a book, which 
})assed through three editions in the time of the Commonwealth, 
must necessarily have had an extensive circulation, and enjoyed a 
high renown. Several complimentary autograph verses, written 
by some imitators and admirers of the ingenious Blith, are bound 
up with the volume, which I beg to j)ut into your Lordshij)'s 
hands as proof of the statements I am making. I find also, not 
unfrecjuently, very ancient deep drains in arable fields, and some 
of them still in good condition ; and in a case or two I have met 
