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The authorities of cities and towns generally take proper precautions 

 to ensure eflScient drainage, and hea\7- taxes are laid on the inhabitants 

 for the purpose of procuring funds for constructing sewers and drains. 

 They are perfectly right in watching over the health of the citizens, and 

 removing that fertile source of disease, stagnant water. Ought not the 

 authorities of rural districts take a lesson from their city brethren, and 

 provide means for opening up water courses of every kind, and remov- 

 ing those noxious pools of stagnant water which are to be found in the 

 ditches of every public road. 



Machines for making pipes and tiles are generally constructed on the 

 principle of forcing the clay, in a properly tempered state, through a 

 die or dies, fixed in an iron box, so that it may come out in a continu- 

 ous stream of pipe or tile, which is then cut into proper lengths. Some 

 machines are provided with a means of cutting these lengths, in others 

 the operation is performed by hand. For some of them the clay must 

 be properly mixed, or amalgamated in a pug mill , in others the clay 

 needs not to be so well prepared, as it is not expressed through dies, but 

 drawn through a series of mould collars, until by the gradual coalition 

 of their forms, it is moulded into an arched tile, or shaped into a pipe, 

 according to the shape of the rollers used in the operation. 



This kind of machine is at present much used in Scotland, and many 

 eminent agriculturists have expressed their approbation of it. 



Tile machines should be light, in order that they may be easily moved 

 along the sheds, in order that the tiles may be conveniently taken from 

 them, and placed on the shelves. The prepared clay should be carried 

 to the machine, and when the tiles are formed, they should be taken 

 from the machine and placed on the shelves with one handling. Newly 

 made or soft tiles, require caution and expertness in the management, 

 as they are very easily put out of shape. 



Mr. Josiah Parks, consulting engineer to the Royal Agricultural So- 

 ciety of England, thus describes a cheap and simple tile machine, the 

 cost of which is only about thirty dollars. It consists of a mere frame 

 of wood, having a cross bench or platform, upon which is placed an iron 

 cylinder, about 17 inches long by 6f inches in diameter, fitted with a 

 mould or die at its bottom. Its capacity is about 608 cubic inches, 

 which bulk of clay, is sufficient for the production of 24 of the smallest 

 kind of pipe. This cylinder when filled with well washed or pugged clay, 



