so crumbled away that the ditch can not be straddled by a team of horses, and thus most of the filling must be done by hand. Mr. Johnston in draining a field commences at the foot of each ditch and works up to the head. He opens his mains first, and then the lateral or small drains, but he lays the tiles in the laterals and fills them completely before laying the pipe in the mains. The object of this is to prevent the accumulation of sediment in the mains. which would naturally be washed from the laterals on their first being laid. By commencing at the foot of each ditch and working upward, he can always get and preserve the regular fall, which may be dictated by the features of his field, more easily than by working toward the outlet. A little practice teaches the ditchers how to preserve the grade almost as well as if gauges were employed; but before laying the tiles, the instrument is applied to test the bottom thoroughly.* The necessity of this precaution will be apparent to any one who reflects that if a tile or two in the course of a ditch be set much too high or too low at either end, the water quickly forms a basin beneath and around, sediment is washed into the adjoining pipe, and ultimately even the whole bore is filled and the drain stopped. When this happens it will be indicated after a time by the water appearing at the surface of the ground above the spot-drawn upward by capillary attraction. In such a case the ditch must be reopened and the tile relaid.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Mr. Johnston says tile-draining pays for itself in two seasons, sometimes in one. Thus, in 1847, he bought a piece of ten acres to get an outlet for his drains. It was a perfect quagmire, covered with coarse aquatic grasses, and so unfruitful that it would not give back the seed sown upon it. In 1848 a crop of corn was taken from it, which was measured and found to be eighty bushels per acre, and as, because of the Irish famine, corn was worth $1 per bushel that year, this crop paid not only all the expense of drainage, but the first cost of the land as well.

Another piece of twenty acres, adjoining the farm of the late John Delafield, was wet and would never bring more than ten bushels of corn per acre. This was drained at a great cost, nearly $30 per acre. The first crop after this was 83 bushels and some odd pounds per acre. It was weighed and measured by Mr. Delafield, and the county society awarded a premium to Mr. Johnston. Eight acres and some rods of this land, at one side, averaged 94 bushels, or the trifling increase of 84 bushels per acre over what it would bear before those in

* I have never used a leveling instrument. I always had water, which is the best instru ment.-J. J.

significant clay tiles were buried in the ground. But this increase of crop is not the only profit of drainage; for Mr. Johnston says that on drained land one half the usual quantity of manure suffices to give maximum crops. It is not difficult to find a reason for this. When the soil is sodden with water, air can not enter to any extent, and hence oxygen can not eat off the surfaces of soil-particles and prepared food for plants; thus the plant must in great measure depend on the manure for sustenance, and of course the more this is the case, the more manure must be applied to get good crops. This is one reason, but there are others which we might adduce if one good one were not sufficient.

Mr. Johnston says he never made money until he drained, and so convinced is he of the benefits accruing from the practice, that he would not hesitate-as he did not when the result was much more uncertain than at present-to borrow money to drain. Drains well laid, endure; but unless a farmer intends doing the job well he had best leave it alone and grow poor, and move out West, and all that sort of thing. Occupiers of apparently dry land are not safe in concluding that they need not go to the expense of draining, for if they will but dig a three-foot ditch in even the driest soil, water will be found in the bottom at the end of eight hours, and if it does come, then draining will pay for itself speedily. For instance Mr. Johnston had a lot of thirteen acres on the shore of the lake, where the bank at the foot of the lot was perpendicular to the depth of thirty or forty feet. He supposed from this fact, and because the surface seemed very dry that he had no need to drain it. But somehow he lost his crops continually, and as he had put them in as well as he knew how, he naturally concluded that he must lay some tile. So he engaged an Irishman to open a ditch, with a proviso that if water should come into it in eight hours, he would drain the entire piece. The top soil was so hard and dry as to need an application of the pick, but at the depth of a foot it was found to be so wet and soft that a spade could easily be sunk to the entire depth of ten inches with little force. The ditches were made, and in less than the specified time a brave lot of water flowed in. The piece was thoroughly drained, and the result was an immense crop of corn. The field has regularly borne 60 or 70 bushels since. Corn was planted for a first crop in this and the preceding instances, because a paying crop is obtained in one year, whereas if wheat were sown it would be necessary to wait two seasons. He always drains when the field is in grass, if possible, for the ditches can be made. easily and spring is chosen that the labor may not be interfered with by frosts.

To show how necessary it is to avoid planting trees over drains, we quote a case in point. In a lot adjoining his house are four large elms which are marked to be felled, and for the reason that the lot was formerly so wet that a pond of water stood upon it in winter, and throughout the season the children

skated and slid upon it. It was drained, and all went well for a time; but after seven years Mr. Johnston found his drains did not discharge properly, and that in certain places the water came to the surface, so as to destroy or greatly lessen crop above them. He could not account for the circumstances until he dug down to the drain at each of these spots, when, to his surprise, he found the tile [two four-inch tile with a semi-circle of nine inch set on top of them] completely choked with fibrous roots of the elms.

the

Mr. Johnson says he never saw one hundred acres in any one farm, but a portion of it would pay for draining. Mr. Johnston is no rich man who has carried a favorite hobby without regard to cost or profit. He is a hard-working Scotch farmer, who commenced a poor man, borrowed money to drain his land, has gradually extended his operations, and is now reaping the benefits, in having crops of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He is a gray-haired Nestor, who, after accumulating the experience of a long life, is now at sixty-eight years of age, written to by strangers in every State in the Union for information, not only in drainage matters, but all cognate branches of farming. He sits in his home. stead a veritable Humboldt in his way, dispensing information cheerfully through our agricultural papers and to private correspondents, of whom he has recorded 164 who applied to him last year. His opinions, are, therefore, worth more than those of a host of theoretical men, who write without practice. He says that the retrogression of our agriculture in the older States, is to be accounted for in our lack of drainage, poor feeding of stock, which results in giving a small quantity of poor manure, and in not keeping enough to make manure. He applies twentyfive loads of manure to the acre at the beginning of a rotation, and this lasts throughout the course. He learned from his grandfather that no farmer could afford to keep any animal that did not improve on his hands, and that as soon as it was in good marketable condition it should be sold and replaced by another. This theory he has always carried out, and as a natural consequence, has always got higher prices for his beef stock, and a ready market in the dullest of times.

Although his farm is mainly devoted to wheat, yet a considerable area of meadow and some pasture has been retained. He now owns about 300 acres of land. The yield of wheat has been 40 bushels this year, and in former seasons, when his neighbors were reaping 8, 10, or 15 bushels, he has had 30 and 40. We are informed by him that there has been no such crop as the present since 1845, either in yield or quality; and the absence of weevil is remarkable. A variety of white wheat from Missouri, sown more thinly than usual, has yielded 31 bushels to something less than one bushel of seed sown. It headed out a fortnight earlier than the Soule's, but ripened later-probably because thinly sown. Johnston thinks we have been sowing too thickly for fifteen years past upon rich

Mr.

land, and there can be no question but that he is right. Still, it is better to take a medium course between thick and thin sowing, and thus avoid, on the one hand, rust, overcrowding, and waste of seed, and on the other, placing an entire crop at the mercy of insects which may attack it.

SIZE OF TILES FOR MAINS AND LATERALS.

A too common error with improving farmers is that of using too small tile for main drains, and too large for laterals. Those accustomed to the roomy conduits of ordinary stone drains, suppose that nothing less than a three inch bore will conduct the drainage from the surface into the mains; and curiously enough the same persons, unmindful of the large area drained by each system of laterals, err in using mains but little larger in bore than the latter. If any are willing to look into the results of the drainage on our Central Park, the most stupendous work of the kind in the country, and one of the best conducted, they will find that the one and a half inch and two inch tiles there used for laterals do not run full even after the most violent and protracted rains, and yet from a single "system" of twelve acres, the discharge after a recent rain was at the rate of 3,000 gallons per hour. This error of using too large tile Mr. Johnson fell into, and now that he has learned better after a twenty years' experience, he cautions his brother farmers against using larger than two inch tile for laterals. For mains each farmer must provide as the quantity of water to be conducted is greater or less. In many cases Mr. Johnston has used two rows of four inch, in others six inch, and in one, semi-circles of eleven inches, one as top and one as bottom, making a pipe nine inches bore to discharge water. At first he had many to take

up

and replace with large pipe to secure a complete discharge. Main drains he makes six to eight inches deeper than those emptying into them-not with an abrupt shoulder, but leveled up, so that the descent may take place gradually in the length of two tiles-29 inches-and always giving the laterals a slight sidewise direction at the end, so that their water will be discharged down stream into the mains.

Another error he at first fell into was, in having too many drains on lowlands, and not enough on the uplands; thus seeking to carry off the effect, while the cause the outcropping springs on the hill-side-remained untouched. Where the source of the water is most abundant, the means for removing it should most abundantly be furnished. Rain water falls on hills, sinks to an impervious stratum, along which it runs until it either finds a porous section through which it can fall to a lower level, or not finding such, continues on the hard bottom of the side of the hill, where it crops out in the form of a spring. If this spring water is suffered to run down hill, it washes the hillside more or less, and coming to the low

land, sinks as far as it may into the soil, makes it sodden, and produces bad effects. To drain effectually, then, we must cut off the supply above, and fewer drains will be necessary below. Here is the whole secret of the thing, and here we see why so much money is spent to so little purpose by those who think that they should only drain wet lowland. Appearances are deceitful, and we should not suppose that a seemingly dry upland is really dry."

Tile works have been established at many places in New York State, in several places in Massachusets, in twelve or fifteen counties in Ohio. Some five or six different tile machines are in active operation at Cleveland, and are unable to supply the demand; in fact so far as the demand is concerned, the same may be said of every place at which tile are made in Ohio. Michigan, Indiana, Maryland and several other States have tile works.

Considerable draining has been done in the north-west part of Ohio, in that region more familiarly known as the Black Swamp-a peculiar formation extending over several counties-by means of open ditches. Brush, wood and stone drains are not unknown in Ohio; and within a few years past upward of four hundred miles of underdraining have been done in Union, Clark, Madison, Fayette, Highland and Clinton counties, by means of the so-called mole plow—a detailed description of this machine will be found in an appropriate portion of this work.

CHAPTER I.

PRACTICAL DRAINAGE.

Before commencing drainage operations, many things are to be taken into account, the most important of which, in all probability, to the farmer, is, what kind of drains shall be made. When lands can be purchased from $5 to $15 per acre, it would, perhaps, not be advisable to underdrain with tile, at a cost from $15 to $25 or $30 per acre.

Drainage is designed to be a permanent improvement; as much so as building a house or barn. In all farm improvements, the farmer in the West is proverbial "cutting the coat according to the cloth." The western farmer is emphatically a practicable man, makes use of such means and materials as he can command, whether it be in accordance with any system "found in books," or not; and to this fact, perhaps, as much as to anything else, do we owe the amount of progress made in agriculture in the State of Ohio, and in the West generally. If the farmer had withheld all improvements, until they could have been made in the most approved manner, we possibly might yet be in the full enjoyment of log cabins