166 



carry au insignificant stream that would fold up iu a one, two or three 

 inch. coil. Wo must bear in mind that a two inch pipe will carry as 

 much water as four one inch pipes. A three inch pipe is equal to nine 

 of one inch. I have frequently seen great ditches made, sufficient to 

 carry forty times the quantity of water that would ever come, and yet 

 they had run full and overflowed. Why ? Because the outlet or ditch 

 below had been impeded by vegetable matter, a heap of earth fallen in 

 or some trivial obstruction. 



Farmers are, I am sorry to say, much too negligent about their 

 ditches, which should be cleared of vegetable matter before Novem- 

 ber, and when rains do come they should carefully examine every ditch 

 or drain, to see if any bushes, or other obstructions stop the current 

 I have a great aversion to open ditches. A pipe 12 inches in diameter 

 will carry the water of 144 inch drains, even if they run full; but as 

 in most cases, they are seldom more than one third full, it follows, that 

 a twelve inch pipe will carry the water of from 3 to 400 inch drains.^ 



In another place Mr. Mechi states that " on examining my five feet 

 drains on the 24th of December, I found the one inch pipes ran about 

 one fourth full and discharged each, one gallon per minute or a hogs- 

 head per hour. These five feet drains continued to run three days after 

 the 32 inch drains had ceased running. On the fifth of January some 

 of the one inch pipes discharged four gallons per minute, or one ton 

 per hour. It was after a melting snow." 



Mr. Mechi is a strenuous advocate for deep drainage; on this subject 

 he says : " The deep drains always ran first and last ; consequently 

 they render the land much drier than the shallow drains, by carrying 

 away more water. I am sure we know very little about the depth to 

 which plants will send down their roots. I know of extraordinary in- 

 stances, in deep friable soils, of the roots of swedes and white turnips 

 running do'vn several feet. In one case where a pit was cut through 

 when cropped with parsnips, a root was traced to the depth of 13^ feet. 

 Now we must bear in mind, that roots will not go down one foot into 

 undrained, unstirred land saturated with stagnant 2vater. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



Having to the best of my ability, endeavored to impress upon the . 

 reader the necessity of thorough draining, and having described the 



