FARMEES' INSTITUTES. 197 



''I -would scarcely have believed it if I had not seen and tried it. The first 

 crop almost paid for drainiug." 



3d. "We pass to notice that the character of the soils and subsoil has much to 

 do with the pay question. 



I woixld not have you think that, like a patent-medicine vender, I would 

 recommend this as the only panacea for all soils and conditions of soils. 

 Nothing could be farther from my intention. There are soils so poor in 

 a state of nature that any amount of draining, manuring, etc., could hardly 

 make them habitable. 1 will only speak of one or two conditions. I have 

 in mind a farm which has about 30 acres of soil apparently rich enough, but 

 of sandy loam and gravel, underlaid by light quicksand tliat comes within 

 two feet to eighteen inches of the surface. Crops always look poor, and heavy 

 manuring seems only to relieve for a single crop the monotony, and not then is 

 tlie land affected as other land is. The plants will not root in this quicksand, 

 and the manure put on leaches half away, going into the quicksand, and passes 

 off below where the rootlets ever feed. Draining would only help such land in 

 a meanire, by deepening the feeding-ground of the rootlets. The leaching 

 could not be hindered. There are lands tliat seem to be full of the ferrous sul- 

 phate in solution, and only by a long process of oxidation can this be changed 

 to the ferric sulphate, and most of iis have not the time to wait for such lands 

 to become })roductive by drainage, even if we had the funds and disposition. 

 And sometimes we find soils that do not seem to have the requisite food for plant 

 growth at all. 



4th. Will it pay to drain on all lands, irrespective of jorice? 



AYe would answer, No. If lands were from §10 to 815 per acre, it would 

 hardly pay to lay out from 125 to ^40 per acre on drains, Avhen for that amount 

 you could buy from one to two acres more of land to cultivate. It is only when 

 the pioneer sy.-tem of farming has passed away, and men have land worth from 

 $30 to $100 per acre, that it will pay to follow a thorough system. But you 

 may a«k, Why bring this subject before us, when more than half our State is 

 just undergoing settlement? The reason is this : that to be forewarned is to be 

 forearmed ; and we have faith to believe that the southern four tiers of counties 

 of this State could be very much benefitted if the farmers who own lands that 

 need it Averc fully awake to the subject of draining. It is a lamentable fact 

 that our beloved Peninsular State is falling behind, according to statistics from 

 the Department of Agriculture, year by year, in the amount of wheat, corn, 

 hay, oat«, etc., produced per acre, so that the average for the whole State is 

 about eleven bushels of wheat per acre, and shows our State to be tenth in wheat 

 culture, per acre, ninth in oats, — raising about 29^ bushels per acre, and 31.4 

 of corn. 



Let us compare with England in 1867, with an average of 26.7 per acre. 

 They luive better farming there, — better drainage. Tliey believe in plowing less 

 and tilling better; and tliis is what we, as farmers, want to school ourselves to. 



Suppose a man sow 20 acres of wheat a -year, and raise from 18 to 20 bushels 

 per acre, and that by thorough cultivation and drainage he increa-e this to 30 

 bushels i>3r acre : he would then have to sow only 13^ acres, at 30 buthels per 

 acre yield, to raise as much as before from 20 acres at twenty bushels per acre, 

 or Gf acres less. He Avould then save the use of Gf acres of land, and the cost 

 of putting in 6-| acres of wheat and seeding, which is not far from 810 per acre. 

 When looked at in this light, it will pay to drain and cultivate better, and every 

 farmer should be awake to the fact. 



