provement of bog, morass, moor, and other
unproductive ground, after being drained; the whole illustrated by
plans and sections applicable to the various situations and forms
of construction. Inscribed to the Highland and Agricultural Society
of Scotland, by John Johnstone, Land Surveyor."

Mr. Ruffin certainly deserves great credit for his enterprise in
republishing in America, at so early a day, a work of which an English
copy could not be purchased for less than six dollars, as well as for
his zealous labors ever since in the cause of agriculture.

There is, in this work of Johnstone, a quaintness which he, probably,
did not learn from Elkington, and which illustrates the character of his
mind as one not peculiarly adapted to a plain and practical history of
another man's system and labors. For instance, in speaking of the
arrangement of his subject into parts, he says, in a note, "The subject
being closely connected with _cutting_, _section_ is held as a better
_division_ than chapter!"

Again, he speaks of embanking, and says he has some experience on that
head. Then he adds the following note, lest a possible pun should be
lost: "An embankment is often termed a 'head,' as it makes head, or
resistance, against the encroachment of high tide or river floods."

There is some danger that a mind which scents a whimsical analogy of
meaning like this, may entirely lose the main track of pursuit; but
Johnstone's special mission was to ascertain Elkington's method, and
his account of it is, therefore, the best authority we have on the
subject.

He gives the following statement of Elkington's discovery:

"In the year 1763, Elkington was left by his father in the
possession of a farm called Prince-Thorp, in the parish of
Stretton-upon-Dunsmore, and county of Warwick. The soil of this
farm was so poor, and, in many places, so extremely wet, that it
was the cause of rotting several hundreds of his sheep, which first
induced him, if possible, to drain it. This he begun to do, in
1764, in a field of wet clay soil, rendered almost a swamp, or
_shaking_ bog, by the springs which issued from an adjoining bank
of gravel and sand, and overflowed the surface of the ground below.
To drain this field, which was of considerable extent, he cut a
trench about four or five feet deep, a little below the upper side
of the bog, where the wetness began to make