Where these conditions can be secured, irrigation will be found most useful, not only in augmenting the supply of grass, but in producing it so much earlier than in the higher meadows that the farmer hereby gets a fresh green pasture, of great utility, especially in fattening and bringing on early lambs. From these circumstances it follows, that although some land is occupied in the water-conduits, yet the value is so far increased that meadow at 30_s._ per acre before irrigation has, under one’s own eye, become worth £5 per acre in four years. There are, however, some necessary expenses in setting out the work, making floodgates, &c., the extent of which will of course depend upon the nature of the ground. In Gloucestershire, on the banks of the Churn, where irrigation has been successfully carried on for years, there is a permanent cost of about 6_s._ an acre for keeping the works in order, and charges of the “drowner,” the name given to the man who overlooks the works, in some instances of several proprietors or tenants. A peculiarity in irrigated meadow of the best quality is, the general absence of coarse grasses on the one hand, and of any plants other than grasses on the other; hence, then, good succulent and nutritious herbage is the rule, and anything that can be otherwise described is the rare exception. Indeed, so much is this the case, that a bit of coarse grass—such, for instance, as _Aira cæspitosa_ (Tussac Grass)—making successful growth in any part of the meadow, is at once an evidence of a stagnation of water at that spot—a condition that a clever drowner at once looks to when he has discovered it. As an evidence of the changes which go on as the process succeeds, as well as of their nature, we give the following as the tabulated result of the irrigation of half of a meadow whose slope was too great to allow of the whole being operated upon. From these it will be seen that the proportionals of different pasture plants before and after irrigation offer a material change; and it may be added, that in some cases, what would otherwise be a bad and useless grass, may become succulent and useful from the beneficial action of water. One of this kind is the _Agrostis stolonifera_ (Fiorin Grass), which is in arable couch-grass weed, but in the irrigated meadow it becomes of a fine green colour, is nutritive in quality, and will bear with any amount of clipping. It may here, too, be remarked that in cases where only a part of a meadow can be irrigated, good accrues to the whole, as in depasturing the whole is ranged over by our cattle and sheep. We here give the following TABLE OF CHANGES IN GRASSES AND OTHER PLANTS UNDER IRRIGATION.