As was stated in the previous chapter, the water which reaches the soil may be considered under two heads:

1st-That which reaches its surface, whether directly by rain, or by the surface flow of adjoining land.

2d-That which reaches it below the surface, by springs and by soakage from the lower portions of adjoining land.

The first of these is beneficial, because it contains fresh air, carbonic acid, ammonia, nitric acid, and heat, obtained from the atmosphere; and the flowage water contains, in addition, some of the finer or more soluble parts of the land over which it has passed. The second, is only so much dead water, which has already given up, to other soil, all that ours could absorb from it, and its effect is chilling and hurtful. This being the case, the only interest we can have in it, is to keep it down from the surface, and remove it as rapidly as possible.

The water of the first sort, on the other hand, should be arrested by every device within our reach. If the land is steep, the furrows in plowing should be run horizontally along the hill, to prevent the escape of the water over the surface, and to allow it to descend readily into the ground. Steep grass lands may have frequent, small, horizontal ditches for the same purpose. If the soil is at all heavy, it should not, when wet, be trampled by animals, lest it be puddled, and thus made less absorptive. If in cultivation, the surface should be kept loose and open, ready to receive all of the rain and irrigation water that reaches it.

In descending through the soil, this water, in summer, gives up heat which it received from the air and from the heated surface of the ground, and thus raises the temperature of the lower soil. The fertilizing matters which it has obtained from the air,-carbonic acid, ammonia and nitric acid,—are extracted from it, and held for the use of growing plants. Its fresh air, and the air which follows the descent of the water-table, carries oxygen to the organic and

mineral parts of the soil, and hastens the rust and decay by which these are prepared for the uses of vegetation. The water itself supplies, by means of their power of absorption, the moisture which is needed by the particles of the soil; and, having performed its work, it goes down to the level of the water below, and, swelling the tide above the brink of the dam, sets the drains running, until it is all removed. In its descent through the ground, this water clears the passages through which it flows, leaving a better channel for the water of future rains, so that, in time, the heaviest clays, which will drain but imperfectly during the first one or two years, will pass water, to a depth of four or five feet, almost as readily as the lighter loams.

Now, imagine the drains to be closed up, leaving no outlet for the water, save at the surface. This amounts to a raising of the dam to that height, and additions to the water will bring the water-table even with the top of the soil. No provision being made for the removal of spring and soakage water, this causes serious inconvenience, and even the rain-fall, finding no room in the soil for its reception, can only lie upon, or flow over, the surface,not yielding to the soil the fertilizing matters which it contains, but, on the contrary, washing away some of its finer and looser parts. The particles of the soil, instead of being furnished, by absorption, with a healthful amount of moisture, are made unduly wet; and the spaces between them, being filled with water, no air can enter, whereby the chemical processes by which the inert minerals, and the roots and manure, in the soil are prepared for the use of vegetation, are greatly retarded.

Instead of carrying the heat of the air, and of the surface of the ground, to the subsoil, the rain only adds so much to the amount of water to be evaporated, and increases, by so much, the chilling effect of evaporation.

Instead of opening the spaces of the soil for the more free passage of water and air, as is done by descending water, that which ascends by evaporation at the surface brings up soluble matters, which it leaves at the point where it becomes a vapor, forming a crust that prevents the free entrance of air at those times when the soil is dry enough to afford it space for circulation.

Instead of crumbling to the fine condition of a loam, as it does, when well drained, by the descent of water through it, heavy clay soil, being rapidly dried by evaporation, shrinks into hard masses, separated by wide cracks.

In short, in wet seasons, on such land, the crops will be greatly lessened, or entirely destroyed, and in dry seasons, cultivation will always be much more laborious, more hurried, and less complete, than if it were well drained.

The foregoing general statements, concerning the action of water in drained, and in undrained land, and of the effects of its removal, by gravitation, and by evaporation, are based on facts which have been developed by long practice, and on a rational application of well know principles of science. These facts and principles are worthy of examination, and they are set forth below, somewhat at length, especially with reference to Absorption and Filtration; Evaporation; Temperature; Drought; Porosity or Mellowness; and Chemical Action.

ABSORPTION AND FILTRATION.-The process of underdraining is a process of absorption and filtration, as distinguished from surface-flow and evaporation. The completeness with which the latter are prevented, and the former promoted, is the measure of the completeness of the improvement. If water lie on the surface of the ground until evaporated, or if it flow off over the surface, it will do harm; if it soak away through the soil, it will do good. The rapidity and ease with which it is absorbed, and, therefore, the extent to which under-draining is successful, de

pend on the physical condition of the soil, and on the manner in which its texture is affected by the drying action of sun and wind, and by the downward passage of water through it.

In drying, all soils, except pure sands, shrink, and occupy less space than when they are saturated with water. They shrink more or less, according to their composition, as will be seen by the following table of results obtained in the experiments of Schuebler:

Professor Johnson estimates that peat and heavy clay shrink one-fifth of their bulk.

If soil be dried suddenly, from a condition of extreme wetness, it will be divived into large masses, or clods, separated by wide cracks. A subsequent wetting of the clods, which is not sufficient to expand it to its former condition, will not entirely obliterate the cracks, and the next drying will be followed by new fissures within the clods themselves; and a frequent repetition of this process will make the network of fissures finer and finer, until ́the whole mass of the soil is divided to a pulverulent condition. This is the process which follows the complete draining of such lands as contain large proportions of clay or of peat. It is retarded, in proportion to the amount of the free water in the soil which is evaporated from the surface, and in proportion to the trampling of the ground, when very wet. It is greatly facilitated by frost, and especially by deep frost.

The fissures which are formed by this process are, in time, occupied by the roots of plants, which remain and decay, when the crop has been removed, and which prevent the soil from ever again closing on itself so completely as before their penetration; and each season's crop adds new roots

to make the separation more complete and more universal; but it is only after the water of saturation, which occupies the lower soil for so large a part of the year, has been removed by draining, that roots can penetrate to any considerable depth, and, in fact, the cracking of undrained soils, in drying, never extends beyond the separation into large masses, because each heavy rain, by saturating the soil and expanding it to its full capacity, entirely obliterates the cracks and forms a solid mass, in which the operation has to be commenced anew with the next drying.

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Mr. Gisborne, in his capital essay on "Agricultural Drainage," which appeared in the Quarterly Review, No, CLXXI, says: "We really thought that no one was so ignorant as not to be aware that clay lands always shrink "and crack with drought, and the stiffer the clay the greater the shrinking, as brickmakers well know. In the great drought, 36 years ago, we saw in a very retentive "soil in the Vale of Belvoir, cracks which it was not

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very pleasant to ride among. This very summer, on land "which, with reference to this very subject, the owner “stated to be impervious, we put a walking stick three "feet into a sun-crack, without finding a bottom, and the "whole surface was what Mr. Parkes, not inappropriately, "calls a network of cracks. When heavy rain comes upon a soil in this state, of course the cracks fill, the clay "imbibes the water, expands, and the cracks are abolished. "But if there are four or five feet parallel drains in the "land, the water passes at once into them and is carried "off. In fact, when heavy rain falls upon clay lands in this "cracked state, it passes off too quickly, without adequate "filtration. Into the fissures of the undrained soil the roots only penetrate to be perished by the cold and wet of the "succeeding winter; but in the drained soil the roots fol"low the threads of vegetable mold which have been "washed into the cracks, and get an abiding tenure. Earth

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