cow-houses, hammels, and other houses, should be treated in this manner: for, if one place be left them to breed in, the young fry will find access to the corn in some way. The tops of the walls of old as well as of new farmsteads can be treated in this manner, either from the inside, or, if necessary, by removing the slates or tiles until the alteration is effected. One precaution only is necessary to be attended to in making beam-fillings, especially in new buildings, which is, to leave a little space under every couple face, to allow room for subsidence or the bending of the couples after the slates are put on. Were the couples, when bare, pinned firmly up with stone and lime, the hard points would act as fulcra, over which the long arm of the couple, while subsiding, with the load of slates new put on, would act as a lever, and cause their points to rise, and thereby start the nails from the wall plates, to the imminent risk of pushing out the tops of the walls, and sinking the top of the roof. 2. But besides the tops of the walls, rats and mice breed under ground, and find access into apartments through the floor. To prevent lodgment in those places also, it will be proper to lay the strongest flagging and causewaying upon a bed of mortar spread over a body of 9 inches of small broken stones, around the walls of every apartment on the ground-floor where any food for them may chance to fall, such as in the stables, byres, boiling-house, calves' house, implementhouse, hay-house, pig-sties, and hen-house. The corn-barn has already been provided for against the attacks of vermin; but it will not be so easy to prevent their lodgment in the floors of the straw-barn and hammels, where no causewaying is usually employed. The principal means of prevention in those places are, in the first place, to make the foundation of the walls very deep, not less than two feet, and then fill up the interior space between the walls with a substantial masonry of stone and lime mixed with broken glass; or perhaps a thick body of small broken stones would be sufficient, as rats cannot burrow in them as in earth.

(74.) It is very desirable, in all courts occupied by stock, to prevent the farther discharge of rain-water into them, than what may happen to fall upon them directly from the heavens. 1. For this purpose all the eaves of the roofs which surround such courts should be provided with rain-water spouts, to carry off the superfluous water, not only from the roofs, but to convey it away in drains into a ditch at a distance from, and not allow it to overflow the roads around, the farmstead. 2. With a similar object in view, and with the farther object of preserving the foundations of the walls from damp, drains should be formed along the bottom of every wall not immediately surrounding, any of the courts. These drains should be dug 3 inches below the foundation-stones of the

walls, a conduit formed in them of tile and sole, or flat stones, and the space above the conduit to the surface of the ground filled up with broken stones. These broken stones receive the drop from the roofs, and carry away the water; and, should they become hardened above the drains, or grown over with grass, the grass may be easily removed, and the stones loosened by the action of a hand-pick. Rain-water spouts should be placed under the front-eaves of the building A A, and on both sides of the straw-barn L, and along the front-eaves of the stables O and P, of the byre Q, calves' cribs R, and of the hammels M and N. These lines of eaves may easily be traced in the isometrical view, fig. 3, Plate III. The spouts may be made either of wood or cast-iron, the latter being the more durable, and fastened to the wall by iron-holdfasts. Lead spouts are, I fear, too expensive for a steading, though they are by far the best. The positions of the rain-water drains around the steading may be traced along the dotted lines, and the courses the water takes in them are marked by arrows, as in the plan, fig. 4, Plate IV.

Fig. 25.

(75.) But it is as requisite to have the means of conveying away superfluous water from the courts, as it is to prevent its discharge into them. 1. For this purpose, a drain should enter into each of the large courts, and one across the middle of each set of hammels. The ground of every court should be so laid off as to make the lowest part of the court at the place where the drain commences or passes; and such lowest point should be furnished with a strong block of hewn freestone, into which is sunk flush an iron grating, having the bars only an inch asunder, to prevent the passage of straws into the drain. Fig. 25 gives an idea of such a grating, made of malleable iron, to bear rough usage, such as the wheel of a cart passing over it; the bars being placed across, with a curve downwards, to keep them clear of obstructions for the water to pass through them. A writer, in speaking of such gratings, says, "they should be strong, and have the ribs well bent upwards, as in that form they are not so liable to be choked up."* This remark is quite true in regard to the form gratings should have in the sewers of towns, for with the ribs bent downwards in such a place, the accumulated stuff brought upon them by the water would soon prevent the water getting down into the drains; but the case is quite different in courts where the straw covers the gratings

DRAIN GRATING.

* Highland and Agricultural Society's Prize Essays, vol. viii. p. 375.

Fig. 26.

from the first, and where being loose over the grating whose ribs are bent downwards, it acts as a drainer, but were the gratings bent upwards, as recommended, the same straw, instead of acting as loose materials in a drain through which the water percolates easily, would press hard against the ribs, and prevent the percolation of water through them. Any one may have perceived that the straw of dunghills presses much harder against a raised stone in the ground below it, than against a hollow. The positions of these gratings are indicated in the plan, fig. 4, Plate IV, by x in the different courts; and in fig. 2, Plate II. they are seen at the origin of all the liquid manure drains, in the form of small dark squares. 2. Drains from the courts which convey away liquid manure as well as superfluous water, should be of a different construction from those described for the purpose of carrying away rain-water. They should be built with stone and lime walls, 9 inches high and 6 inches asunder, flagged smoothly in the bottom, and covered with single stones. Fig. 26 shews the form of this sort of drain, and sufficiently explains its structure. As liquid manure is sluggish in its motion, the drains conveying it require a much greater fall in their course than rainwater drains. They should also run in direct lines, and have as few turnings as possible in their passage to the reservoir or tank, which should be situate in the lowest part of the ground, not far from the steading, and at some convenient place in which composts may be formed. One advantage of these drains being made straight is, that, should any of them choke up at any time by any obstruction, a large quantity of water might be poured down with effect through them, to clear the obstruction away, as none of them are very long. These drains may be seen in the plan, fig. 4, Plate IV, to run from x in their respective courts in straight lines to the tank . It would be possible to have a tank in each set of hammels and courts, to let the liquid manure run directly into them; but the multiplicity of tanks which such an arrangement would occasion, would be attended with much expense at first, and much inconvenience at all times thereafter in being so far removed from the composts. Were the practice adopted of taking the liquid manure to the field at once, and pouring it on the ground, as is done by the Flemish farmers, then a tank in every court would be convenient.

LIQUID MANURE DRAIN.

(76.) The liquid manure tank should be built of stone or brick and lime. Its form may be either round, rectangular, or irregular, and it may

be arched, covered with wood, left open, or placed under a slated or thatched roof, the arch forming the most complete roof, in which case the rectangular form should be chosen. I have found a tank of an area of only 100 square feet, and a depth of 6 feet below the bottoms of the drains, contain a large proportion of the whole liquid manure collected during the winter, from courts and hammels well littered with straw, in a steading for 300 acres, where rain-water spouts were used. The position of the tank may be seen in the plan, fig. 4, Plate IV, at k. It is rectangular, 34 feet in length and 8 feet in width, and might be roofed with an arch. The tank x, in the isometrical view, fig. 3, Plate III, is made circular, to shew the various forms in which tanks may be made. A cast-iron pump should be affixed to one end of the tank, the spout of which should be as elevated as to allow the liquid to run into the bung-hole of a large barrel placed on the framing of a cart.

(77.) Gates should be placed on every inclosed area about the steading. Those courts which require the service of carts, should have gateways of not less width than 9 feet, the others proportionally less. 1. The more common form of gate is that of the five-barred, and which, when made strong enough, is a very convenient form. It is usually hung by a heel-crook and band. I am not fond of gates being made to shut of themselves, particularly at a steading, for whatever ease of mind that property may give to those whose business it is to look after the inclosure of the courts, it may too often cause neglect of fastening the gate after it is shut; and unless gates are constantly fastened where livestock are confined, they may nearly as well be left altogether open. The force of the contrivance of gates to shut of themselves, has often the effect of knocking them to pieces against the withholding-posts. 2. Sometimes large boarded doors are used as gates in courts, and especially in a wall common to two courts. They are at best clumsy looking things, and are apt to destroy themselves by their own intrinsic weight. 3. Sometimes the gate is made to move up like the sash of a window, by the action of cords and weights running over pulleys on high posts, the gate being lifted so high as to admit loaded carts under it. This may be an eligible mode of working a gate betwixt two courts in the peculiar position in which the dung accumulating on both sides prevents its ordinary action, but in other respects it is of too complicated and expensive a construction to be frequently adopted. I shall have occasion afterwards to speak at large on the proper construction of gates.

(78.) I wish to suggest some slight modifications of this plan of a steading, as they may mcre opportunely suit the views of some farmers than the particular arrangements which have been just described 1. I have

already suggested that, if the large courts I and K are to be dispensed with and hammels adopted in their stead, the hammels M could be produced towards the left as far as the causeway e', on the right hand of the straw-barn L; and so could the hammels N be produced towards the right as far as the south gate of the court I. By this arrangement the cart-shed V, and store-houses g and f', would be dispensed with, and the cattle-sheds DD converted into cart-sheds and a potato-store. 2. The piggeries a, b, and c, could then be erected in the middle of the court at K, and the hen-houses in the middle of the court I, respectively, of even larger dimensions than I have given them in the places they occupy. 3. If desired, the work-horse stable O might be separated from the principal range A by a cart-passage, as is the case with the byre-range Q, by which alteration the hay-house and stable would have doors opposite, and the present north door of the hay-house dispensed with. It would be no inconvenience to the ploughmen to carry the hay and corn to the horses across the passage. 4. If the stable were disjoined, the righthand granary may have a window in the east gable, uniform with that in the west over the implement-house G. 5. It may be objected to the boiling-house U being too far removed from the work-horse stable O. As there is as little inherent affinity betwixt a boiling-house and byre as betwixt one and a stable, the boiling-house might be removed nearer to the stable, say to the site of the riding-horse stable P, and the coachhouse Z could then be converted into a potato-store, with a common door. 6. The gig-house and riding-horse stable could be built anywhere in a separate range, or in conjunction with the smithy and carpenter's shop, should these latter apartments be desired at the steading. 7. The servants' cow-byre Y, could be shifted to the other end of the hammel range N, to allow the hammels to be nearest the straw-barn. 8. Any or all of these modifications may be adopted, and yet the principle on which the steading is constructed would not be at all affected. Let any or all of them be adopted by those who consider them improvements of the plan represented on Plate IV.

(79.) As I have mentioned both a smithy and carpenter's shop in connection with the steading, it is necessary to say a few words regarding them. It is customary for farmers to agree for the repairs of the iron and wood work of the farm with a smith and carpenter respectively at a fixed sum a-year. When the smithy and carpenter's shops are near the steading, the horses are sent to the smithy, and every sort of work is performed in the mechanic's own premises; but when they are situate at such a distance as to impose considerable labour on horses and men going to and from them, then the farmer erects a smithy at the steading for his

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