drain (dran)

[ The drain on agricultural labour for mill-hands, and the vast cost of machinery, which two or three sand-storms disabled, soon demonstrated his mistake. Saturday Rev., Sept. 9, 1865. IMG:content-3131.png:[blocks in formation] When there are no such Natural Drains of Charity as Children and near Relations which need our A istance. Stilling fleet, Sermons, III. х. Specifically - ( a ) A pa age, pipe, or open channel for the removal of water or other liquid; especially, a pipe or channel for removing the surplus water from soils. Drains may be open ditches or sunken pipes or conduits. Those for wet lands are so made as to permit the percolation into them of water from the adjacent soil, as by the use in a covered conduit of porous earthen pipes or tiles, or of a filling of small stones, of an open cut where there is a sufficient slope, etc. See sewer. Here also it receiueth the Baston dreane , Long tost dreane, and thence goeth by Mickham into the sea, taking with all on the right hand sundry other dreanes . Holinshed, Descrip. of Britaine, xv. (b) The trench in which the melted metal flows from a furnace to the molds. (c) In surg., a hollow sound or canula used to draw off purulent matter from a deep seated absce . 3. pl. The grain from the mash-tub: distinctively called brewers ' drains. - Gun-barrel drain, a cylindrical drain of small diameter. - Rubble drain, in agri., a drain formed of a layer of rubble-stones laid in a trench.