FARMS. 99 



My mowing and tillage land is uneven, and apt to be 

 washed by heavy rains. The soil is loamy, with gravelly 

 knolls and hollows or runs between. The gravel is sharp 

 and the wet places are mostly underlaid with a hard-pan 

 subsoil. And the whole farm is suited to grasses, rather than 

 grain. 



Within a few years I have been doing something in the w r ay 

 of under-draining. I commenced on a bog-meadow of about 

 two acres, near the buildings. I cut it all over with the 

 bog-hoe, burned the bogs, spread the ashes and seeded down 

 with grass. Good crops of hay were taken off for a few years ; 

 but the land did not become a permanently good meadow, 

 till I had thoroughly under-drained it, and spread the marl 

 or hard-pan soil taken from the bottom of the drains on the 

 surface, and mixed it with the mud. 



The drains are all of stone. Upon this lot are one hundred 

 and thirty-one rods of drains in length. One drain is entirely 

 round the lot, and ten others connect with the central drain ; 

 which, for the most part, is still open, because I have not 

 yet found time to cover it, and wait for a season dry enough 

 to clear it out once more. The other drains are upon upland. 

 A wet, miry gully, dividing the cultivated land nearly in the 

 centre, where I had occasion continually to cross it, — but could 

 not do so with a load, — I have now made hard, dry land, by 

 digging a drain forty-six rods in length, and from three and a 

 half to five feet in depth, and wide enough to take in, at least, 

 two rods of heavy wall to one rod of drain. I have drawn in 

 stones as large, each of them, as four oxen could haul ; and, 

 in one instance, when I had many such to dispose of, placed 

 two abreast on the bottom of the drain. I usually lay stones 

 of a foot in diameter, or nearly that size, on the bottom, to 

 keep the larger ones above the running water ; then fill with 

 smaller stones to within eighteen or twenty inches of the top 

 surface, and cover with poor hay, brush or shavings, before 

 replacing the loam. In digging I use a plough, an ox scraper, 

 and, when very hard and stony ,^ a pick axe and a shovel. A 

 subsoil plough is best to use after the top soil is taken off. 

 The filling is done wholly with the plough and scraper. 



The under-drains I have now finished, measure two hundred 

 and twenty-four rods, or' more than two-thirds of a mile. In 



