CARTER AND CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR X8G2. 
Ill 
DECEMBER. 
The winter’s work has now fairly set in, and carriage of material^ of grain, of dung, of marl, and clay, and lime, with occa- 
sional ploughing8 of the stubbles when the weather permits, occupy the horses. 
The Hand-labour is confined to attendance on stock, to thrashing grain, to mending roads and fences, and to land drainage. 
Land Draining. — This, on all soils where there is no 
natural drainage for the rain-fall, is now universally consi- 
dered an essential to good agriculture. A short reference 
to the theory and the practice of it therefore must be per- 
mitted in our Calendar. 
It is properly Winter's work ; the ground is softer 
and more easily dug ; the land is wetter and betrays more 
plainly the need of the operation : water gathers, and there 
is no levelling needed to show the “fall.” 
(1) Let us first refer to the theory of the operation. 
Rain-water is needed to feed the plants, for it contains oxy- 
gen, carbonic acid, ammonia, and nitric acid, so that it not 
only acts chemically on ingredients in the soil winch it 
thus prepares as food for plants, but it is itself, in respect 
of some of these ingredients, the food of plants. 
Water gets into the soil as rain-fall on its surface, as 
spring-water rising from below, and by capillary attraction 
drawn up from below. Water leaves the soil by running 
over its surface, in which case it leaves its work, as the 
feeder of the plants, altogether undone ; by evaporation 
from the surface, in which case it reduces the temperature 
of the land; and by percolation through its substance, warm- 
ing the soil in its pavssage, introducing its own ingredients 
as well as the air which follows it, and feeding the plants 
with the substances it has dissolved from the land as it 
passes by their roots. Notwithstanding that on its escape, 
after percolating through the soil, it contains, dissolved in 
it, a considerable quantity of fertilizing matter, yet this is not 
nearly so much as would be expected by a person ignorant 
of those absorptive properties oi soils, which Professor Way 
has investigated, and by which the ammonia, both of rain- 
water and of manure, is retained in a comparatively inso- 
luble state, so that the percolation of water through the 
land is not so wasteful a process as it otherwise would be. 
It is this absorptive property of soils that explains that 
great agricultural paradox which meets the student on the 
very threshold of his readings on the chemistry of agricul- 
ture. lie is told that agriculture is simply a food manu- 
facture ; that the produce of its processes is made of mate- 
rials existing in the air and soil ; that only substances 
soluble in water are available for this purpose ; and yet, of 
the whole mass of mineral matter concerned in this manu- 
facture, not only does he find that it is thinly spread as a 
soil some 6 or 8 inches thick in a layer over an enormous 
surface, and then washed annually by 4 or 5 times its own 
bulk of rain-water — one of the most poworful natural sol- 
vents — but that positively this manufacture is most produc- 
tive, its produce largest where this solvent is permitted to 
run through the land in its escape downwards to the sea. 
Fresh from the manipulations of the laboratory, acquainted 
with the protresses by which precipitates are deprived of any 
soluble mixtures which they may contain, having himself 
patiently superintended the washing of earthy deposits on 
his filter in order to remove any soluble matter which they 
contain, how is he to reconcile the assertion of science, that 
fertility depends on the preservation of soluble matter in 
the soil, with that of practice, that fertility depends very 
materially upon your enabling the water which falls upon 
the surface of the land to pass through its whole thickness 
and escape through channels in the subsoil ? Mr. Way has 
satisfactorily removed the difficulty. Not only does rain- 
water, when allowed to traverse tliis layer out of which 
our food is made, improve the underground climate, on 
which, as we know, the luxuriant growth of plants materially 
depends ; not only does it by its passage act as waiter at the 
repast, carrying food to the roots of the growing plants ; 
not only does it bring to the soil the riches of the air, and 
so add to its wealth as a well-filled store-room ; not only 
docs it, by the addition which it thus supplies and the acti- 
vity which drainage gives it, and its own solvent powers, 
make the whole an entire laboratory in which food for 
plants is being prepared for use ; but its liability to waste 
the contents of this store-room and the products of this 
laboratory, by the access and egress which it possesses, is 
held in ciieck ; so that a fertile well-drained soil is really 
not only one of the pleasantest sights on which the eye can 
rest, but one of the most beautiful specimens of ingenious 
and conservative contrivance on wliioh the mind can dwell. 
(2) In practice, this percolation of rain-water tlirough 
the soil on which it alights, is obtained by digging drains 
4 feet deep and from 18 to 20 feet apart, placing in them 2- 
inch pipes, having first provided an unchecked outfall for 
them at the lower end of the field. The results of this ex- 
pedient are, that wo have greater facility and economy of 
cultivation ; tillago is made botli easier and more efficient; 
and we have a changed climate — one which, if it be not 
changed to the feelings of animals, is wonderfully changed 
as regards its influence on plants. The difference of a few 
degrees in the underground climate of the soil causes a 
most material difference in the regions of vegetation and 
the fitness of the land for potato crops. The mean tem- 
perature of the soil round Edinburgh is stated to be 52° 
during the summer months. It is on the authority of 
Dr. Lindley that we learn, if it were to fall to only 47°, it 
is doubtful if wheat would ripen well, or indeed at all. 
And the earliness of harvest, wliich is due to drainage, is 
owing not only to an improved underground climate, but 
also to the constant feeding of the plants which we thus 
obtain. In undrained land we have occasional starvation 
of the plants ; and comparing growth to an erection, and 
ripening to its completion, the process is the sooner finished, 
and more complete when done, for its continuous prosecu- 
tion. These are the three great results of artificial land- 
drainage when no natural drainage exists — cheaper culti- 
vation, better underground climate, and continuous and 
abundant plant-feeding. They produce amongst them an 
earlier and more productive harvest, and justify us in de- 
scribing the drainage of wot and drying soils as a funda- 
mental agricultural necessity. 
