1839-1845-] 
LAND DRAINAGE. 
153 
Kingdom, with a view to the possibility of their being 
rendered useful for agricultural purposes. The question 
was becoming urgent. The demand for food grew daily 
greater, and the falling prices and general agricultural ruin 
which followed the Peace of 1815 reduced the supply. 
The population of the country was increasing at an enor¬ 
mous rate, while at the same time there was a constant 
recurrence of bad seasons. 
The mass of information which Buckland collected 
extends over a period from 1818 to 1847, and apparently 
has never been published. Public attention was by him 
directed to the commercial good that would attend the 
draining of marsh lands so as to render them capable of 
“ yielding their increase,” and to the improvement which 
might be effected in the health of the dwellers in fen 
districts. Among his memoranda occurs such an entry 
as this: “Within the last few years Seaton fever and 
Cambridge fever have happily become extinct.” On the 
possibility of reclaiming peat bogs he writes :— 
“ A mere peat bog, whether wet or drained, is a mass 
of inert vegetable matter, which, till some method be dis¬ 
covered of exciting putrefaction, must remain unproductive 
for ever. The plan of burying the surface under a covering 
of new matter is one which can only be practised in places 
where the neighbourhood supplies the necessary materials 
—by sinking a shaft and raising the under stratum, whether 
clay marl or limestone gravel. This system may be adopted 
in most of the bogs of the great central belt of Ireland, 
they being generally based on the limestone rock, and 
abounding in hillocks and ridges of limestone gravel, for 
the burning of which the peat supplies fuel. But, in the 
majority of the mountain bogs, the distance of lime and 
the exposure of their situation render the capability and 
