where the plain begins to be too moist, some augur-holes should be bored, in order to find the depth of the springs, and consequently the thickness of the upper stratum of the soil. If this be only 4 or 6 feet, an horizontal ditch should be cut along the bottom of the hill, to intercept the water, which ought to be carried off by one or more ditches communicating with the former, and conducting the water thus collected, into the neighbouring rivulet. Farther, as the strata, through which the water descends in forming these springs, have, with a few exceptions, the same inclination as the surface of the hill, the holes should be bored, and the ditch cut, not vertically downwards, as is commonly practised, but perpendicularly to that surface; a method which greatly facilitates the arriving at the second stratum: this will be more evident from the subjoined cut.
a, b, is the upper stratum, for instance, of marl; c, d, is the second stratum, of sand; e, f, represents the accumulated earth in the valley. It is designed to shew, that, in boring holes through the upper stratum, in order to find that beneath it, they should be formed perpendicularly to the side of the mountain, and not perpendicularly to the horizon, as by the former method the hole y, y, is rendered much shorter than that marked x, x.
If, nevertheless, on cutting a ditch five or six feet deep, along the foot of a hill, vertically to the rising plain, the upper stratum be not penetrated, and consequently no water ooze in to the bottom of the ditch, it will be expedient to bore other holes at the bed of such ditch, some yards deeper, or till water ascend through them. Where this succeeds, many holes should be made, and the water, conducted into the adjacent brook, or river; for it will then rise, collect in those trenches six feet below the wet surface of the valley, and thus be carried off, instead of rising up from the lower wall-springs, or apertures of the stratum, through the incumbent soil, to the surface of the valley, which is so many feet higher.
This is the method which has been successfully practised, for several years, by Mr. Elkington; but the prior, or at least coeval, discovery of which, is justly claimed by Dr. James Anderson, who states (in the introduction to his ingenious "Essays on Agriculture," vol. iii.) that he sunk a hole with a wimble into the earth at the bottom of a ditch, in the year 1764; that the water rose six feet above the surface of the ground, and has
