288 [Senate 



must be taken out by hand or by the spade, instead of being buried 

 by the plow; they also encourage the growth of aquatic plants, rush- 

 es, tussocks, and a multitude of other usurpers that cattle will eat when 

 starved to it, but which are not sufficiently nutritious to make them 

 fat, and upon which they must necessarily deteriorate. 



The Flemish maxim of " no clover no manure,"' &c. is reversed 

 under this system, for clover cannot be long maintained upon irrigat- 

 ed or permanent grass lands. And every man who has ever noticed 

 the effect of drouth upon them, must have remarked that it operates 

 with tenfold more force upon lands that are permanently in grass, 

 than upon lands that are seeded anew every three or four years. To 

 render land fertile and profitable, it must be occasionally expos(!d to 

 all the influences of aerial phenomena. It is in vain for Liebig, 

 Chaptal or Davy to furnish in alkalies, acids or excrementitious ma- 

 terials, the food of plants; unless they combine with them the whole 

 range of atmospheric phenomena they can form no chemist's work- 

 shop equal to tliat of nature; and her laboratory is perpetually evolv- 

 ing new forces, and rendering new adjustments to promote vegetation, 

 but not permitting any thing to grow without the aid of her combi- 

 nations, their particles pervading every organic production, and fol- 

 lowing every transition of structure until the law of mortality, the con- 

 dition of existence, has performed its office and destroyed their func- 

 tions, when they soon become a mass of materials designed to add to 

 the number of living beings, and to increase the amount of sensitive 

 enjoyment under some new and probably more important organiza- 

 tion. 



Draining, on the other hand, improves every thing to which it has 

 any relation. It renders the land friable and easily pulverized, so 

 that one plowing and much harrowing is frequently saved; it fits it 

 much earlier in the season for a crop; it prevents poaching by the 

 feet of cattle, and enables the farmer to apply his labor at all seasons. 

 No baking by hot sun; no hard clods impervious to atmospheric in- 

 fluence; no freezing out in winter (one of the most serious objections 

 to our climate;) no early frosts to cut off your fall crops. All moves 

 on pleasantly; farming becomes a delightful occupation; and whether 

 the hoe, the harrow or the plow is to be used, all goes on cheerily; 

 men go whistling with their teams, and women singing with their 

 milk pails, the very personification of happiness! 



When we look at the efforts of that great and good man, Judge 

 Buel, to promote a thorough system of draining land, and think how 

 few men (professing as many do, to venerate his memory, "l have adopt- 

 ed his counsels, it feels truly discouraging to offer advice to farmers. 

 Book farming is indeed worthless, when men thus refuse all its most 

 valuable admonitions. We know that his reasonings point to the 

 greatest good of the greatest number; that the greater amount of 

 land drained, the greater the number of intelligent beings provided 

 for, and the greater the benefits they mutually confer on each other, 

 and consequently the more elevated their physical and intellectual 

 condition. It is when they are thus made happy, that they see and 



