282 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
for example, five farmers agreed not only the collective irrigation of 4.5 hectares of
meadows, but also a quota for water allocation based on 7 days and nights each,
and operation and management costs for them and their successors (Bowie,
1987b).
Experiments with drainage
Farmers also improved their land by experimenting with new methods for drain-
ing wet soils. The traditional method had been to plough ridges and furrows, but
now farmers began to dig trenches that were filled with stones or plant matter, and
to lay tile drains. In the 1820s James Smith of Perthshire, having laid a network of
deep drains on 80 hectares, supplemented drainage with a heavy subsoil plough he
had invented for the purpose (Watson and Hobbs, 1937). The land was converted
from waterlogged to luxuriant, and ‘farmers and landowners came crowding to
visit’ (Watson and Hobbs, 1937). Friends and neighbours in the Gargunnock
Farmers’ Club copied his method with considerable success.
Like irrigation, drainage so improved the value of land that incoming tenants
were often willing to pay up to four times the former rent. But drainage did not
advance significantly until the invention of a machine to make cylindrical pipes in
the 1840s. Government then supported drainage by subsiding drainage costs by
about 17 per cent between the 1840s and 1870s (Beckett, 1990).
Experiments with handtools
Another target for experimentation was the seasonal peak of labour demand dur-
ing cereal and hay harvest. Inter-regional labour flows were necessary to meet this
constraint, and harvest gangs in England were commonly drawn from Ireland and
Scotland and the workforce in the newly industrializing centres, where iron fur-
naces, forges and mills often closed at harvest as workers returned to the fields
(Collins, 1969; Jones, 1967). The opportunity to offset this constraint came with
the development of new harvesting tools to replace the sickle. These were the
scythe (blade attached to a bow or cradle to assist in the laying-down of the cut),
the reap-hook (slightly heavier and broader than the sickle) and the bagging-hook
(large, heavy smooth-edge hook with a second hook to tension the cereal), and
represented a labour-saving potential of 40 per cent, 15 per cent and 35 per cent
respectively (Collins, 1969). The adoption varied by location, and changes to blade
and handle design were common.
Experiments with pest control
Diverse genetic stock, a diverse agricultural landscape, and multiple cropping
would have checked outbreaks of pests and diseases during this period. But there
were few explicit experiments on pest and disease control. Thomas Coke saved £60
worth of turnips in one field after he had gathered 400 ducks to control black