for Agricultural Purposes. 
281 
above such obstructions to receive the water, this most advantageous work 
might, be done at small expense, and a single experimeut of it would 
presently show the prodigious advantage of the practice. 
He adds : — 
The application of this system to mountainous moors is one of the most 
profitable speculations which agriculture has to offer, and yet there are 
none so much neglected. From viewing them I have been greatly sur- 
prised at this, because there would be scarcely any that do not contain 
such spontaneous proof of the advantage as might, have been sufficient for a 
hint to the stupidest clown. The firm spots by the sides of the torrents, 
from flooding, acquire a beautiful verdure, that proves a perfect contrast 
to the dreariness of the waste around ; and where there are little rills on 
the mountain-sides, not considerable enough to cut a regular bed for their 
waters, but which spread, they are attended so universally with the 
verdure, owing simply to the water, as shows the advantage in the clearest 
manner. 
Mr. Robert Smith actually undertook to convert absolute 
wastes — the wild rough heather land of forest hill-sides — into 
water meadows without previously reclaiming them by tillage, 
and he appears to have been tolerably successful in this grand 
enterprise. Another aim equally novel, and almost as bold, 
he likewise successfully accomplished, that of making his water 
carriers convey manure from his cattle yards to the fields 
wanting it. He diverted his main stream so as to pass through the 
farm premises, when, after driving a water wheel, “ the waste 
water passed through the yards, and under every office to collect 
and wash out the sewerage of the whole establishment, and then 
pass it away to a pond at the outside of the buildings from 
which the adjacent meadows were watered.” 
Not only so, but Mr. Smith made this stream convey to 
considerable distances large quantities of the solid farmyard 
dung likewise. In this Journal, Yol. XII. 1st Series (1851), 
he says (p. 144) : — 
By means of tbe stream passing through the yards any portion of the 
farmyard dung may be thrown into it, and washed at leisure to the 
different meadows below, and at periods when possibly horse labour might 
be invaluable for other operations on the farm. 
Moreover finding that the heath water is impregnated 
with injurious properties for irrigation, he remedied the evil 
by mixing the excrements of cattle with it by a method 
described by himself as follows : — 
To effect a proper change in these waters, arrangements should be made 
along the main carriages — which take their rise from the brook course at 
the foot of the uncultivated bill — to form sheds for young cattle upon 
them, that the dung and urine may continually mix with the passing stream. 
These sheds were placed at the higher end of the meadows, 
a short distance above the water carriage, just leaving sufficient 
