SECRETARY'S REPORT. 91 



111 1854, drains were laid two hundred and scventy-eiglit 

 rods in length, costing two hundred and fifty dollars. This, 

 however, includes an undue proportion of large and more costly 

 drains for mains, needed to carry the surplus water a distance 

 from the lands made dry, but available as mains for future small 

 drains. Yet this is an average of about ninety cents per rod, 

 three and one-half feet deep. 



The small drains were laid with Sole Tile that cost twenty- 

 four dollars and fifty cents per thousand delivered at the farm, 

 (double the cost in Albany, where manufactured,) and the mains 

 with flat stones, resting on side stones, filled in and covered as 

 before described, the earth being returned easily with a two 

 horse scraper. A field of one acre and two-fifths ' thorough 

 drained ' in this way, forty feet apart, three and a half feet deep, 

 required one hundred and five rods, irfcluding main, and cost 

 sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents per acre completed. This 

 field was ploughed and subsoiled, each about ten inches deep, 

 and a hoed crop taken oif last season. During the heaviest 

 rain no running or standing water could be seen on its surface. 



O CD 



When your committee made its visit we were shown an acre of 

 this field, which had been manured and partly ploughed for corn 

 when a protracted rain came on. The seed being in soak and 

 manure wasting, after the second day's rain it was resolved to 

 prosecute the planting, and the ploughing was finished, the land 

 harrowed, furrowed, dressed in the furrow, and planted in a 

 drizzling rain, working easily and well. The corn all came up 

 and has grown well ; and still we did not see many clods or ^ 

 other appearances of wet weather working. Yet this was a 

 clay loam, formerly as wet as the adjoining grass field, upon 

 which oxen and cart could not pass on the day of this planting 

 without cutting through the turf and ' miring ' deeply. The 

 nearest neighbor, a member of your comm.ittee, said 'if he had 

 planted that day it must have been from a raft ! ' 



In 1855 provisions were so high that such labor as ditchers 

 rendered could not be cheapened in cost per rod ; but an ex- 

 periment was tried on a field of three acres, by laying tile 

 drains, three and a half feet deep, four rods apart, leading into 

 a stone main, all of them being covered and filled as before. 

 An acre required forty-five rods — average cost, ninety cents 



