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other, by the diligent use of the spade and shovel; and, ifnecessary, surface drains or cuts are opened across the head-ridge at the bottom of the field, in convenient places, toconvey the water into the fence ditch, that none may stag-nate in any part of the field. This implies the necessity offence ditches being always kept scoured and open, for theready conveyance of water from every part of the farm.
After a field is harrowed, by which process the inter-fur-rows, gaw-furrows, and cross drains must necessarily be moreor less filled up and obstructed, every one of these must becarefully opened up again by the plough, followed by the di-ligent use of the spade and shovel. In fact, under no cir-cumstance of husbandry, independent of improvements whichdo not fall under consideration in this chapter, is the dif-ference between good and bad management more eminentlyconspicuous, than in the perfection with which arable land,of a strong retentive soil and subsoil, is surface-drained in theway pointed out. These attentions become peculiarly neces-sary on the commencement of a thaw, after a storm of snow ;indeed gaw-furrows require to be continually looked afterduring the whole course of the year, as nothing is more in-jurious to land than the lodgment of water upon its surface.
§ 8. Of crooked ridges .—In all the best cultivated districtsin Scotland , arable land is now formed into regular straightlined ridges of equal breadths, on the principles already in-dicated, with a very few exceptions to be noticed hereafter,and these are every year becoming less numerous. Former-ly, the ridges were almost universally broad, high, crooked,and of unequal and irregular breadths, and frequently hadstrips of uncultivated land between them, named baidks fsometimes of considerable breadth, which were overgrownwith brush-wood and weeds, and filled with every kind ofrubbish gathered from the cultivated land. These last arenow universally i obliterated and reduced to cultivation onevery w’ell managed farm; and the few crooked ridges which