One point, therefore, has been gained. No intelligent English
farmer, who has tried the system, now asks if under-drainage will
pay; nor does he expect that it will pay back the whole expenditure
in less than twelve or fifteen years. Here is a generous faith in
the operation on the side of all the parties concerned. Then why
should not Alderman Mechi's irrigation system be put on the same
footing, in the matter of public confidence? It is nothing very
uncommon even for a two-hundred-acre farmer in England to have a
small stationary or locomotive steam-engine, and to find plenty of
work for it, too, in threshing his grain, grinding his fodder,
pulping his roots, cutting his hay and 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