FARM EXPERIENCE. 241 



tile, clean tlieni out, and put them back. I did so, but in 

 about a year and a half up came the water again. * I began to 

 lose my faith in under-draining, and my neighbors began to 

 laugh. Some of them thought this tiling was a queer thing. 

 "Well," said I, "tlie only difference is, you put your pipe in 

 your mouths, and I put my pipes in the ground." I dug them 

 up a second time, and put in three-inch tile, and every sixty 

 feet I put in a well; in other words, I sunk some of this large 

 cement pipe which is made for sewers, two feet long and a foot 

 in diameter in the clear, hacking out on each side of the pipe 

 with a hammer, a place for the tile to rest in. My o])ject was 

 to have these roots, as they came down the tile, drop into tiiese 

 wells and sink to the bottom, while the clear water would run 

 off. Since I have done that I have had no trouble. In case 

 they do fill up I can dig down to these wells, run a pole in 

 thirty feet and push out this stuff; but I have almost made a 

 vow that I will never drain the field again. I will turn it over 

 to the bull-frogs. 



I cut a fine piece of rye upon the upper portion of the lot 

 last year. I have got the east side seeded down to grass, 

 where I had a heavy crop of oats that I cut to cure and put 

 into the barn for feeding out this winter. On the south part 

 of the lot, on the west end, I raised 700 bushels of turnips, 

 and below that, where it was not under-drained, I raised po- 

 tatoes, puttiiig one eye in a hill, and had a good crop. 



My theory is, that this is a blind grass, the same as the blind 

 fish in the Mammoth Cave. Where there is no light they do 

 not need any eyes, and I do not believe this plant has any 

 mode of growing from a root. It is fed, in my opinion, by 

 spring water and the air that circulates in the drain above the 

 top of the water. There seems to be two kinds of it. I 

 brought these samples along to see if any of our professors 

 can tell where it came from. 



Mr. Gould. — From a cursory examination through a mag- 

 nifying glass there appear to me to be three kinds of roots in 

 this mass. One I should suppose to be a root of the ordinary 

 quack grass; another seems to me to belong to the genus 

 Phalaris Americana; and the third seems to me to be a corn 



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