FARM ARCHITECTURE. 141 



By careful draining it is possible to make a soil naturally 

 wet lit to live upon. 



Where any doubt exists, the entire site should be thor- 

 oughly undcrdrained. The foundation-walls should be solid ; 

 that is, laid in cement and mortar. 



An enterprising rat with a large family on his hands will 

 destroy more in a single winter than the whole extra cost of 

 the mortar. 



" Pointing " the face will not answer : it will stop " nearly 

 all " the holes, but add whatever nothing to the strength of 

 the masonry. 



There are several good reasons why the first or principal 

 floor of a house should not be too high up in the world. 

 From the picturesque stand-point the lowly estate is de- 

 cidedly preferable, especially as the underpinning is usually 

 treated. But other reasons for keeping the living-rooms well 

 above the surface of the ground are too important to be 

 disregarded. 



A free circulation of air and plenty of light underneath 

 the first floor are indispensable to the best sanitary condition. 

 These can be most easily secured when at least half the 

 cellar or basement story is above the ground. 



The porch and the main entrance-hall may perhaps be 

 upon a lower level. 



For warmth and dryness the cellar-wall above the ground, 

 commonly called the underpinning, should be hollow, — 

 two thin walls of stones, of bricks, or one of each ; which 

 introduces the subject of materials. 



A bird's-eye view of some parts of New England gives the 

 impression that the country must have been a "paved dis- 

 trict " in some remote period, and that the paving-stones 

 were laboriously raked up into stone haycocks and windrows. 

 Where this raw material exists in such abundance that any 

 hollow by the roadside, ravine, washout, or old well, is a 

 genuine blessing as a burial-place for a few loads, it would 

 surely be inconsistent to burn clay to make bricks for cellar- 

 walls. 



In fact, it is an incomprehensible mystery why the stones 

 that liave lain in plain sight year after year, patiently wait- 

 ing till they have grown gray with the moss they have 

 gathered, were not at once and exclusively employed by our 



