244 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



creased three hundred per cent. No operations on my farm 

 have paid me anytliing like the per cent, on the investment 

 that under-draining has done. If I drain any more land, I 

 shall certainly use tile, as a matter of economy, and as a mat}- 

 ter of certainty, too. I have some tile drains, and I have 

 never found anv sinkinsr in them. 



Mb. White. I have laid stone drains, and found that they 

 operated well, and were not very expensive. I suppose, in 

 the way of digging, you might save a little by using tile. I 

 have been somewhat troubled by mice getting into my drains, 

 but I have never had them fill up, or fail to drain perfectly. 

 I have received as much benefit from draining as Mr. Day 

 Las said that he has. Where I cut 1500 lbs. of a poor quality 

 of hay, I now take off two and a half or three tons of a very 

 good quality, and I manure but very little. 



Mr. Day. There are always difficulties connected with 

 stone drains. They will last, sometimes, very well for a long 

 time, but sooner or later, they give out. I think it will gen- 

 erally be found that the tile drain, on the whole, is the cheap- 

 est, particularly when the joints are covered with a collar. 

 But there are some cases where it is desirable, in order to get 

 rid of stones, to dig a drain and bury them in that way. 



Mr. Gould. The last gentleman has hit the difficulty. 

 Sometimes, as he says, a stone drain will work well for ten or 

 twelve years, and then, nobody knows how or why, the rats 

 and mice will begin to work in it, and in a short time it is 

 destroyed. That is almost universally the case, where stone 

 drains are laid in the usual way. But there are stone drains 

 that I have never known, under any circumstances, to be 

 stopped up. In Tompkins and Chenango counties, N. Y., 

 where there are a great many flat stones, drains are laid by 

 placing these stones edgewise, and breaking joints. I believe 

 that kind of a stone drain is absolutely indestructible ; it will 

 ■wear to the end of time. It is impossible for a mole or a rat 

 to penetrate through. They work exceedingly well, and have 

 generally proved very satisfactory. 



While I am up, I wish to say that I hope the ingenious 

 Yankee mechanics of Connecticut will turn their attention to 



