Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with TilesFrench, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Science
Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles
French, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Drainage
"It is calculated in England that the ordinary Summer run of
streams does not exceed ten cubic feet per minute per square mile,
and that the average for the whole year, due to springs and
ordinary rains, is twenty feet per minute per square mile,
exclusive of floods--and assuming no very wet or high mountain
districts (Breadmore, p. 34)--which is equal to about four inches
over the whole surface. If we add to this the six inches that are
supposed to run off in freshets, we have ten inches discharged in
the course of the year by the streams. The whole filtration was
11.29 inches--10.39 in the Winter, and .90 in the Summer. The
remainder, 1.29 inches, is supposed to be consumed by wells and
excessive evaporation from marshes and pools, from which the
discharge is obstructed, by animals, and in various other ways.
These calculations were made from experiments running through eight
years, in which the average fall of water was only 26.61 inches per
annum. When the results derived from them are applied to our
average fall of 35.28 inches, we have for the water that
constitutes the Summer flow of our streams 13.25 cubic feet per
minute per mile of the country drained, and for the average annual
flow, exclusive of freshets, 26.50 cubic feet per mile per minute.
That is to say, of the 35.28 inches of water that fall in the
course of the year, 5.30 run away in the streams as the average
annual flow, 7.95 run away in the freshets, and 20.47 evaporate
from the earth's surface, leaving 1.56 for consumption in various
ways. In the whole year the drainage is nearly equal to one cubic
foot per second per square mile (.976), no allowance being made for
the 1.56 inches which is lost as before stated. These calculations
are based upon English experiments. Mr. McAlpine, late State
engineer and surveyor, in making his calculations for supplying the
city of Albany with water (page 22 of his Report to the Water
Commissioners), takes 45 per cent of the fall as available for the
use of the city. Mr. Henry Tracy, in his Report to the Canal Board
of 1849 (page 17), gives the results of the investigations in the
valleys of Madison Brook, in Madison County, and of Long Pond, near
Boston, Mass., as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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