76 
MOLE-DRAINING AND THE RENOVATION 
OF OLD PIPE DRAINS. 
The reasons why land owners, land agents, and farmers aie 
now turning their attention to Mole-draining on heavy clay 
land are, it is believed, firstly, because a great many of the land 
drains put in forty or fifty years ago are now found to be 
incapable of properl v freeing the land of water ; and secondly, 
because the land drains put in 4 ft. deep with money borrowed 
under the Lands Improvement Acts, generally known amongst 
tenants as Government drains, have proved in many instances 
to be too deep for their purpose ; and thirdly, owing to the 
fall in the capital value of heavy land and to the rise in price 
and scarcity both of skilled labour and of pipes, this class of 
land is not considered worth the expenditure of some 71. per 
acre which would be about the cost of redraining it with pipes 
at the present time. 
Owing to a recurrence of wet seasons after a cycle of dry 
seasons, owners and occupiers of heavy-land farms are once 
more beins? forced seriously to consider the question of land 
drainage. The farmer will often come to the agent and com- 
plain that he can grow nothing like a full crop on his arable 
fields partly because the water ruins his crops and partly 
because on account of the wet state of the land he cannot get 
on it at the proper time, and even if he could get on to the land 
he would be unable to get a proper tilth. How often in the 
last few years has one seen spring-sown crops substituted for 
winter-sown crops on heavy lands, with the consequent loss to 
the farmer, and more permanent crops such as both lucerne 
and sainfoin failing after two years. The reason is neatly 
alwavs the same — the land was too wet. This is frequently 
also the case, unfortunately, with grass lands ; land that used 
to carry sheep with safety *will do so no longer, land that once 
could carry cattle in the winter now becomes poached, land 
that used to grow sweet good hay now tends to grow sour 
herbage and not much of that. 
These are facts which cannot be disputed, but before 
looking for a cure it is necessary to ascertain the causes of the 
present state of affairs. The mouths of land dfains of all sorts 
must be kept clear, that is to say, the ditches into which they 
discharge must be kept well below the mouth of the pipe. If 
the mouth gets blocked the water going down the drain cannot 
get a free outlet and consequently it backs up in the drain and 
becomes stagnant. Then the mud in the water is deposited in 
the pipe, which in a few years becomes quite choked. How 
