straw, and for other
purposes. Mr. Mechi would doubtless have one for these objects
alone. So its cost must not be charged to the account of
irrigation. A single course of iron tubing, a third of a mile long,
reaching to the centre of his farthest field, cannot cost more, with
all the hose employed, than the drainage of that field, while it
would be fair to assume that the iron pipes will last twice as long
as those of burnt clay. They might fairly be expected to hold good
for forty years. If, then, for this period, or less, the process
yields ten per cent. of increased production annually, over and
above the effect of all other means employed, it is quite evident
that it will pay as well as drainage.

But does it augment the yearly production of the farm by this
amount? To say that it is the only process by which the baky and
chappy soil of Tiptree can be thoroughly fertilised, would not
suffice to prove its necessity or value to other soils of different
composition. One fact, however, may be sufficient to determine its
virtue. The fields of clover, and Italian rye-grass, etc., are mown
three and even four times in one season, and afterwards fed with
sheep. Certainly, no other system could produce all this cropping.
The distinctive difference it makes in other crops cannot, perhaps,
be made so palpable. The wheat looked strong and heavy, with a fair
promise of forty-five bushels to an acre. The oats, beans, and
roots showed equally well.

The irrigation and deep tillage systems were going on simultaneously
in the same field, affording me a good opportunity of seeing the
operation of both. Two men were plying the hose upon a portion of
the field which had already been mowed three times. Two teams were
at work turning up the other, which had already been cropped once or
twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English
plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of
twice the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil
plough held to the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous
clods turned up by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer
of Illinois wonder, if not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious
industry which competes with his easy toil and cheap land in
providing bread for the landless millions of Great Britain.

The only exceptional feature or arrangement, besides the irrigating
machinery and process, that I noticed, was an iron hurdling fo