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low the mouths of the. floating gutters ; but if it docs not, a sodor bit of board may be put into the mouths of them, to keep thebed perfectly dry, when the water is removed from one divisionto another, as above. A slab or deal is laid behind each of Shehatches, marked on the plates with a deep, black stroke, thus
-, as a bridge for the person to stand upon when the hatches
are taken up or let down. It may be seen by the positions wherethe hatches are placed in this meadow, that any part or parts ofit may be watered at a time, or tire whole of it together. Thetwo sides of the above meadow are supposed to be wetter groundthan the middle, and in that case the beds are made a little nar-rower ; which should always be the case, that the ground may beproperly drained ; for which purpose, in this meadow, the out-side drain is made, or should be made, a little deeper than theothers, to cut off any surrounding sink. The other small drainsbetwixt the gutters are supposed to be ft inches wide at the head,and 18 or 20 inches at the toot. * This size of drains is sufficienton a piece of dry haugh of the above description.
N. B. The best water meadow that is in the power of good wa-ter, would be very unproductive (or perhaps made worse) if notproperly drained, i. e. with drains, small and great, to answer tothe feeder and gutters, as they are described on this plate.
Plate III.
In this plate, I have attempted to delineate a flooded meadow,formed from a piece of land which had an irregular surface andshape, and had been formerly ploughed and left out in ridgesabout 10 or 12 yards wide; some of them curved, some straight,and some angular; i. e. wide at one end, and narrow at the o-ther; the ridges at the same.time lying in different directions, asrepresented in the plate. From this circumstance, it was neces-sary to divide the meadow into 4 divisions, which are numbered1, 2, 3, 4. The 1st division is watered by the feeder, markedF i, which has a hatch in its mouth for admitting or excludingthe water at pleasure, and is, divided into 2 branches. Division2d Is the highest corner of the meadow, and is accommodatedwith a separate feeder, for two reasons: First, it being higherground than No. 1, it is evident, that if the gutters had beentaken out of the feeder, strong stops must have been raised tokeep the water up to it, which are not good to keep in the headof a large feeder; also, when the water fell in the river, thefeeder would not be full; and No. 1 being lower, would drawthe water so low, that No. 2 would be but badly floated; Se-condly, by having a feeder by itself, it can be floated when theother two divisions are laid dry, &c. &e. Division 3d, is accom-modated with a separate feeder, which is again divided into two
* With 6 inches of depth at the head, and IS! or 14 at the foot.