176 
full of dry springs a parallel or curved drain will be well put in along 
tbe hill side, and brought into connection with the main drain. It is not 
necessary that the whole of a farm shall have the drains connected ; each 
field may be drained upon the same principle, care being taken that you 
clear off the water. Never let it be forgotten that all surface water is bad 
where it dwells or rests. To flow over is refreshing to grass plants, 
washing off insects and depositing lime or ammonia, &c. 
I may be allowed to state the graphic expression, which dwells in my 
mind to this day, given by Lewis Burkhard, a Swiss educated in England, 
and travelling through Nubia and Egypt, of the inhabitants of that coun¬ 
try waiting for the rise of the river Nile; 1 the banks of that river clad 
with expectants of its bounteous overflow.’ This is the first system of 
irrigation we read of, and it is perfect. At a certain period of the year 
the inundation look place ; the husbandmen then deposited the seed in 
the mud which it left, and their crop ensued. In our day the irrigation 
of land has been beneficially practised, both by turning floods of spring 
water over grasses, and by the sewerage of towns. 
In Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, a portion of land is wa¬ 
tered by the sewerage of the city, it is so low situated as to allow of this, 
and the grass is in cansequence so luxuriant as to admit of its being cut 
three or four times in the year, equal in each mowing to two tons per 
acre. 
Another instance I gave in some remarks made on the culture of 
grasses by the late Duke of Portland,* converting 400 acres of barrens 
into fruitful soil, by turning the river Maun over the land and by drain¬ 
ing the town of Chipstone and directing its sewerage over the lands in 
question. I named, too, the improvement of the large district of country 
between Liverpool and Manchester, by draining into open ditches the bog 
of Chat Moss. But why should we go to Europe or to England for 
successful applications of drainage. Under our own eyes we have a 
striking example of what energy will effect. 
Part of the city of Madison is laid out on a piece of flat ground, so 
level as almost to preclude the possibility of draining it, and yet it is 
done. Two years ago it was so wet as to be impassable; previous to that 
* See Yol. II. of Transactions, p. 198. 
