ON THE DRAINAGE OF 
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE MEMBERS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND, 
AT BRISBANE, ON TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 1ST, 1862, BY MR. W. PETTIGREW. 
In Great Britain no subject of late years has 
attracted more attention, or excited more dis- 
cussion amongst those interested in the culti- 
vation of the soil than the drainage of land. 
In Queensland the subject has yet to be dis- 
cussed, and if this paper will be a means of 
drawing the attention of those most interested, 
viz., the landed proprietors, to its advantages, 
it will give me satisfaction. 
The authors whom I have consulted are 
“Loudon’s Encyclopedia of Agriculture,” 
dated January, 1831 ; “British Husbandry,” 
published under the superintendence of the 
Society for the diffusion of useful know- 
ledge in 1834 ; and “ A Cyclopaedia of 
Agriculture,” by John C. Morton, dated Janu- 
ary, 1855. To this last work I am most in- 
debted for the following pages. 
Referring first to the history of drainage 
we find that its advantages seem to have been 
well known from the very earliest times. In 
Palestine the sides of some of the hills seem to 
have been carefully cultivated by having the 
soil held up by stone walls. The bottom of 
these walls acted the part of the drain by al- 
lowing the superfluous "water to get away and 
the atmospheric air to get in. 
That eminently practical people the Romans 
were well acquainted with the art of draining, 
and appear to have practised it to a great ex- 
tent. All their writers on agriculture mention 
it, and some of them give very minute direc- 
tions for the formation of drains, and the di- 
rection in which they should be carried. The 
materials which they employed for forming 
their drains were stones, branches of trees, and 
even straw. One of them mentions earthen- 
ware tubes, which appear to have been some- 
what similar to our draining pipes, but they 
appear to have been used ff r conveying water 
from one place to another rather than for 
drainage. 
In England various forms of ancient drains 
show that draining had been practised from a 
remote period. It was only, however, after 
the cessation of intestine commotions had ren- 
dered the enjoyments of the fruits of industry 
more secure that attention seems to have been 
systematically directed to the subject. 
In a lecture delivered by Mr. Parkes before 
the Royal Agricultural Society at Newcastle in 
1846 he quoted a very curious book written by 
a Captain Walter Bligh, the third edition of 
which appeared in 1652. Bligh not only gives 
directions for the systematic drainage of watered 
meadows, bogs, and marshy ground, but founds 
his rules upon principles which the latest ex- 
perience and the most scientific researches have 
shown to be eminently correct. 
The opinions and precepts of Captain 
Bligh seem, however, to have made hut little 
progress, as the appearance of the country at 
the end of the last} century and the early part 
of the present one abundantly testifies ; so true 
it is that the mere enunciation of an improve- 
ment even when it appeals to self-interest does 
not necessarily insure its adoption. 
In the latter part of the last century, a 
system of drainage was introduced by Mr. 
Elkington, and as about the same time the 
study of geology became more general, he 
brought its aid to the practical carrying out of 
extensive drainage, and in which he was very 
successful. He only, however, contemplated 
