Although the soils specified in this class will not afford fine large larch for naval use, yet they may be very profitably employed in growing larch for farming purposes, or for coal-mines, where a slight taint of rot is of minor importance. The lightness of larch, especially when new cut (about one-third less weight than the evergreen coniferæ), gives a facility to the loading and carriage, which enhances its value, independent of its greater strength and durability. Those larches in which rot has commenced, are fully as suitable for paling as the sound: they have fewer circles of sap-wood, and more of red or matured. When the rot has commenced, the maturing or reddening of the circles does not proceed regularly, reaching nearest the bark on the side where the rot has advanced farthest. A great amelioration of our climate and of our soil, and considerable addition to the beauty and salubrity of the country, might be attained by {89} landholders of skill and spirit, did they carry off the noxious moisture, by sufficient use of open drainage, from their extensive wastes of mossy moors and wet tills, which are only productive of the black heath, the most dismal robe[21] of the earth, or rather the funeral pall with which Nature has shrouded her undecayed remains. This miserable portion of our country, so dreary when spread out in wide continuous flats, and so offensive to the eye of the traveller, unless his mind is attuned to gloom and desolation, lies a disgrace to the possessor. Were a proper system of superficial draining executed on these districts, and kept in repair, most of our conifers, particularly spruce and Scots fir, with oak, beech, birch, alder, and, in the sounder situations, larch, would thrive and come to maturity, ultimately enhancing the value of the district an hundred fold. This could be done by fluting the ground, opening large ditches every 30, 50, or 100 yards, according to the wetness or closeness of the subsoil—the deeper, the more serviceable both in efficacy and distance of drainage. These flutes should stretch across the slope with just sufficient declivity to allow the {90} water to flow off easily, The excavated matter should be thrown to the lower side; and when the whole, or any part, of the excavation consists of earth or gravel, it ought to be spread over the whole mossy surface, whether the field be morass or drier hill-peat: this would be useful in consolidating it, and in preventing too great exhaustion of moisture in severe droughts, from which vegetation in moss-soil suffers so much. Even though planting were not intended, this fluting and top-dressing would facilitate the raising of the gramineæ. These ditches, when the ground is not too stoney, or too moist, or containing roots, might be scooped out, excepting a little help at the bottom, by means of a scoop-sledge, or levelling box, worked by a man and two horses, the surface being