32 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



not much less than $100 an acre ; $85 according to my expe- 

 rience, if the work is done well, — is because so little of it is 

 done. The tiles must be brought from a long distance, and 

 obtained of a man who sells so few that he is obliged to ask a 

 high profit on what he does sell. Then the ditching must be 

 done by men who are not accustomed to the work, with very 

 common tools, and they make the ditch a foot wide at the bot- 

 tom, when three or four inches is all that is necessary. All 

 these things conspire to make the cost $85 an acre, where it 

 ought not to be over $35 or $40. But notwithstanding its high 

 cost, wherever draining is necessary, I conceive it to be unprof- 

 itable to cultivate the land without it. I have on my own farm, 

 over thirteen miles of drains, four feet deep. Those, I am 

 sorry to say, cost from 85 cents to $1 a rod. But it is a most 

 important and necessary improvement. No matter how rich 

 your land may be, it cannot make use of the riches that it 

 contained originally, or that you have put into it, unless it is 

 in a condition to admit the air, and to allow it to attain a cer- 

 tain temperature, so that vegetable growth can go on without 

 being disturbed. If your crops are to be choked off by water 

 until June, when they might commence their growth early in 

 May, you lose not only the time when the crops might have 

 been growing, but you lose the advantage of early maturing 

 your crops, getting them out of the way of frost, and getting 

 your grass ready to be cut in good season, which comes from 

 the free and ready admission of atmospheric air, and from the 

 absence of evaporation of water from the surface, which retards 

 the growth of the plant, and holds everything, even the chem- 

 ical processes of the soil, in material check. 



There are two or three things in connection with drainage 

 which, if they were better understood, would perhaps tend to 

 a more rapid extension of the improvement. One is, that a 

 very small pipe will discharge a large amount of water. I am 

 frequently appealed to by people living in my neighborhood, to 

 know where they can get a certain amount of tiles, three, four, 

 five, or even six inches in diameter, to lay a few hundred feet 

 of drain. It generally results in their going away and ordering 

 tiles 1^ inches in diameter. In draining an acre of land, no 

 matter how wet it is, if it is wet only from the water that falls 

 on the surface, and not from springs flowing into it from the 



