FEEDING HORSES, SHEEP AND OTHER STOCK.

The foregoing arguments are forcible enough to demonstrate the advantages of feeding horses, mules and sheep with corn and cob meal together, but it should be understood that the predominance of the carbonic element renders this food emphatically fattening. The cob cannot replace hay or roots in a system of rational feeding which is intended to produce muscle and sinew.

"The economy of grinding all kinds of grain for feeding" is sufficiently illustrated by the above given hints and theory of digestion; every one knows that whole grains of corn and fragments of the same are dropped with the excrements of cattle and horses; the evil is obvious; the remedy is suggested. The case is precisely the same with other grains, although their minuteness may prevent detection. Oats, protected by their chaff traverse unaffected the digestive organs of the horse, as well as do the seeds of parasitical plants, which reveal their unwelcome presense wherever unfermented manure has been spread.

CONCLUSION.

Advantages and economy are attained by fattening and feeding stock with corn and cob meal together, and also by grinding all kinds of grain.

AN ESSAY ON PRACTICAL DRAINAGE.

BY JOHN H. KLIPPART.

(Copy-right secured according to Law.)

I was earnestly solicited by the Committee on Agriculture of the Legislature at the session of 1858-9 to prepare a practical Essay on Land Drainage, to be published in the Annual Agricultural Report. With great distrust and hesitancy I finally decided to prepare an essay as contemplated by the committee. Shortly after the adjournment of the Legislature, the excellent work of Henry F. French of Exeter, N. H., was published. My own work had by that time, however, progressed too far to be abandoned; but I withheld it from publication in order to interfere as little as possible with the success of French's work.

The entire Essay on Land Drainage as prepared by me occupies 454 duodecimo pages, of which 216 pages are devoted to the discussion of the following topics, viz :

Drainage removes stagnant waters from the surface.

surplus water from under the surface.

lengthens the seasons.

66

deepens the soil.

warms the under soil.

equalizes the temperature of the soil during the season of growth. carries down soluble substances to the roots of plants.

prevents "freezing out" or "heaving out."

prevents injury from drought.

improves the quantity and quality of crops.

increases the effect of manures.

I have deemed it proper to publish in this report the practical portion of the essay only, omitting many tables which are convenient for persons not accustomed to make arithmetical calculations, but which savor too much of an elementary character to find a place here. The entire work is published by Robert Clarke

& Co.,

Cincinnati.

JOHN H. KLIPPART.

DRAINAGE IN THE UNITED STATES.

The introduction of tile drainage in the United States may be given in a very few words. The following account, prepared by a correspondent of the New York Tribune, and corrected and revised by the editor of the Country Gentleman, is perhaps the best account that has yet been written on the subject. It is true, we might state, that "Mr. John Johnston of Geneva, N. Y., introduced tile draining on his farm in 1835; that, in 1848, John Delafield of Seneca county, N. Y., introduced the first tile machine (Scragg's patent, imported from England) ;" and with this passing notice proceed to the next chapter. But those for whom this treatise is written will naturally inquire, "What induced him to drain? Where did he obain tile? How much and in what manner did he drain? What did it cost? Did it pay?" and a host of other questions. It will, therefore, be satisfactory, even at the expense of some space, to present a detailed statement of all the circumstances surrounding and attending his efforts.

JOHN JOHNSTON'S SYSTEM OF DRAINAGE.

"Mr. John Johnston, near Geneva, N. Y., at one time esteemed a fanatic by his neighbors, has come of late years to be generally known as "the father of tile drainage in America." After thirty years of precept and twenty-two of example, he has the satisfaction of seeing his favorite theory fully accepted, and, to some extent, practically applied throughout the country. Not without labor, however, nor without much skepticism, ridicule and controversy has this end been attained; and if, now that his head is whitened and his course almost run, he finds himself respected, and appealed to by persons in every State of the Union, he does not forget that it has been by much tribulation that he has worked out this exceeding great weight of glory. Mr. Johnston is a Scotchman, who came to this country thirty-nine years ago, and purchased the farm he now occupies, on the easterly shore of Seneca lake, a short distance from Geneva. With the pertinacity of his nation, he staid where he first settled, through ill fortune and pros. perity, wisely concluding that, by always bettering his farm, he would better himself, and make more money in the long run than he could by shifting uneasily from place to place in search of sudden wealth. He was poor enough at the commencement; but what did that matter to a frugal, industrious man, willing to live within his means, and work hard to increase them? And so, with unflagging zeal, he has gone on from that day to this.

HIS FARM.

His first purchase was 112 acres of land, well situated, but said to be the

poorest in the county. He knew better than that, however, for although the previous tenant had all but starved upon it, and the neighbors told him that such would be his own fate, he had seen poorer land forced to yield large crops in the old country, and so he concluded to try the chances for life or death. The soil was a heavy gravelly clay, with a tenacious clay subsoil, a perfectly tight reservoir for water, cold, hard-baked, and cropped down to about the last gasp. The magician commenced his work. He found in the barn-yard a great pile of manure, the accumulations of years, well rotted, black as ink, and "mellow as an ash-heap." This he put on as much land as possible, at the rate of twentyfive loads to the acre, plowed it in deeply, sowed his grain, cleaned out the weeds as well as he could, and the land on which he was to starve gave him about forty bushels of wheat per acre. The result was, as usual, attributed to luck, and anything but the real cause. To turn over such deep furrows was sheer folly, and such heavy dressings of manure would not fail to destroy the seed. But it didn't; and let our farmers remember that it never will; and if they wish to get rich, let them cut out this article, read it often, and follow the example of our fanatical Scotch friend.

This system of deep plowing and heavy manuring wrought its result in due time. Paying off his debt, putting up buildings, and purchasing stock each year, to fatten and sell, Mr. Johnston after seventeen years of hard work at last found himself ready to incur a new debt, and to commence laying tile drains. Of the benefits to be derived from drainage he had long been aware; for he recollected that when he was only ten years of age, his grandfather, a thrifty farmer in Scotland, seeing the good effects of some stone drains laid down upon his place, had said, "Varily, I believe the whole airth should be drained." This quaint saying, which needs but little qualification, made a lasting impression on the mind of the boy, that was to be tested by the man, to the permanent benefit of this country.

Without sufficient means himself, he applied for a loan to the Bank of Geneva, and the president, knowing his integrity and industry, granted his request. In 1835 tiles were not made in this country, so Mr. Johnston imported some as samples, and a quantity of the "horse-shoe" pattern were made in 1838, at Waterloo. There was no machine for producing them, so they were made by hand and molded over a stick. This slow and laborious process brought their cost to $24 per thousand, but even at this enormous price, Mr. Johnston determined to use them. His ditehes were opened and his tile laid, and then what sport for the neighbors! They poked fun at the deluded man; and they came and counseled with him, all the while watching his bright eye and intelligent face for signs of lunacy; they went by wagging their heads and saying, " Aha!" and one and all said he was a

consummate ass to put crockery under ground and bury his money so fruitlessly. Poor Mr. Johnston! he says he really felt ashamed of himself for trying the new plan, and when people riding past the house would shout at him, and make contemptuous signs, he was sore-hearted and almost ready to conceal his crime. But what was the result? Why this: that land which was previously sodden with water, and utterly unfruitful, in one season was covered with luxuriant crops, and the jeering skeptics were utterly confounded; that in two crops all his outlay for tiles and labor was repaid, and he could start afresh and drain more land; that the profit was so manifest as to induce him to extend his operations each succeeding year, and so go on until 1856, when his labor was finished, after having laid 210,000 tiles, or more than fifty miles in length! And the fame of this individual success going forth, one and another duplicated his experiment, and were rewarded according to their deserts.

It was not long after the manufacture of the first lot of tiles that a machine was contrived which would make quite as well, and faster; and by its aid they were afforded at quite as low a price as after an English machine was imported. The horse-shoe tile has been used by Mr. Johnston almost exclusively, for the reason that they were the only kind to be procured at first, and on his hard subsoil, finding them to do as well as he could wish, he has not cared to make new experiments. He has drains that have been in function for more than twenty years without needing repair, and are apparently as efficient now as they were when first laid. In soft land, pipe or sole tiles would be preferable, or if horseshoe were used they should be placed on strips of rough board to prevent their sinking into the trench bottom, or being thrown out of the regular fall by being undermined by the running water. He has not used the plow for opening his trenches, for the reason that all his work has been let out by contract, and the men have opened them by the spade; charging from twelve and a half to fifteen cents per rod for opening and making the bottom ready for the tile. The laying and filling was done by the owner.

HIS PRACTICE.

His ditches are dug only two and a half feet deep, and thirteen inches wide at the top, sloping inward to the bottom, where they are just wide enough to take the tile. One main drain, in which are placed two four-inch tiles set eight inches apart, with an arch piece of tile having a nine-inch span set on top of them, was dug three and a half and four feet deep, and this serves as a conduit for the water from a large cistern of laterals. Drains should never be left open in winter, for the dirt dislodged by frequent frosts so fills the bottom that it will cost five or six cents per rod to clear them; and, moreover, the banks often become