UNDERDRAINING LAND. Ill 



on with great care to prevent any breaking of the tile, and so 

 consequently destroying the drain. In putting on this first 

 layer of soil, I had a man stand in the ditch, and taking the 

 earth from the sides, carefully place it. On the muck-meadow, 

 where the bottom of the ditch did not reach the clay, I laid 

 hemlock boards about six inches in width. 



The ditches on the clay soil were dug to a depth of over 

 three feet. I am satisfied that this was a mistake, and if they 

 had been dug to a depth of two feet and a half, and been put 

 as near again together, they really would have been more 

 satisfactory. In reclaiming some of the tracts, I found that 

 ditches conveying the water from the springs which drained 

 them directly into the main open ditch were all that was 

 necessary. Some acres of muck-meadow were by this means 

 drained sufficiently dry without the systematic placing of tiles 

 every two rods. In one instance where a ditch came near a 

 wall where plenty of small, loose stones had accumulated in 

 the course of many years' dumping, I had the experiment tried 

 of using these in place of tile, with reference to determining 

 the comparative cost. The result was decidedly in favor of 

 the tile ; the great deal of handling of the stone made neces- 

 sary in collecting them and selecting the smaller ones for the 

 AViiter-course, and the slow care necessary in placing and 

 covering these, required extra time, the value was far more 

 than an offset for the cost of the tile. 



The general result of this extensive tile-draining has been 

 to bring under successful cultivation many acres that had 

 never before been cultivated, and to so drain drowned areas 

 of their superfluous water that some of the best tillage-land 

 now on the farm embraces tracts that previously could not be 

 relied upon for a crop oftener than one year in two. To sum 

 up briefly the whole matter, it brought into excellent tillage 

 condition a farm previously notoriously wet and cold. I 

 close with a suggestion to my brother farmers : don't expect 

 too much from your uuderdraining the first one or two years ; 

 it will take that time for most of the water in the saturated 

 earth to find routes to the tile, and so complete the under- 

 ground system of drainage. 



