304 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



mend the laying of tiles in muck, in attempting to drain a marsh, for the fol- 

 lowing reasons : First, that a greater quantity of ^vater has to be got rid of for 

 the lirst two or three years, or until it has become solid, than afterward, it 

 therefore requires greater capacity than could be obtained in a tile drain. Sec- 

 ondly, tiles laid in muck without a solid foundation, would be quite likely to 

 get out of place, but in clay bottoms, swamps, or any low land where solid bot- 

 tom can be reached, tiles are preferable, for tile drain properly put in will be 

 a permanent improvement. In laying tiles, great care should be taken to pro- 

 vide a suitable outlet, then, for all ordinary farm drainage, the expense per rod 

 is but a trifle more in the first instance than an open drain and performs its 

 work more jierfectly, for it never fills up, and there is no bank or ridge to set- 

 tle down hard and form a levee, keeping water out of the drain, but on the 

 contrary it creates a filter through which the water can readily pass into the 

 tiles, for it will not harden even the most tenacious clay, and becomes arable 

 and light and easy to plow and capable of being moved earlier in the spring and 

 and sooner after heavy showers. In fact it makes valuable land out of low, 

 worthless bottoms which farmers plow again and again, never realizing any- 

 thing for their labor but drowned crops and weeds. 



If the farmers who have this kind of land would universally underdrain, it 

 would pay for tlie investment a hundred fold, not perhaps in a financial point 

 of view, but in beautifying their homes and advancing the value of their farms, 

 by making them more productive with the same outlay of labor, and, lastly, 

 carrying olt a vast amount of stagnant water, which would otherwise engender 

 malaria and poison the surrounding atmosphere. At the present time we have 

 two practical systems of drainage in this State. First, individual drainage, 

 where the farmer is always repaid when thoroughness and ordinary skill are 

 employed in the work. If time and space would permit, we could name many 

 instances of individual drainage where the improvement to the land alone has 

 been remunerative to the owner, and we have no doubt but that many of our 

 farmers would ennfage in tiie work the comiuG: season, were it not for the 

 scarcity and high price of good material. The other system is what is known 

 as the township drain law, whicli, like all other public beneficiaries, has its 

 opponents among whom are men of high standing; more especially the tax- 

 payers who are fortunate enough not to own any low land. Yet, by the aid of 

 this law, we have succeeded in opening a great many drains through long 

 chains of marshes, wliich without the aid of the law could never have been 

 accomplished. Thanks to the Michigan legislature for the creation of such a 

 law. While we are willing to admit that in some instances individuals are ex- 

 cessively taxed, or do not receive the amount of pecuniary benefit they should, 

 jet indirectly they are repaid for the investment, for the effect of drainage upon 

 the health of a community is strikingly apparent. It is universally conceded 

 by physicians that the decomposition of vegetable matter, filling the atmos- 

 phere with malaria, is the chief cause of bilious diseases ; and it is a well known 

 fact tiiat inlermittent and remittant fevers have very mueli diminislied of late 

 years ; fully fifty per cent, tlie physicians tell us. Many of you well remem- 

 ber that among the pioneer settlements of Michigan, especially in this county, 

 ague and biHous fever were i>revalent, that at times there were scarcely well 

 enough to take care of tlie sick. Take this fact in connection witli the then 

 condition of our marshes, and the newly broken soil, and compare tiiem with 

 the present, and the greatly improved state cf the public health, and the infer- 

 ence is forced upon us that they l)ear the relation to each otlier of cause and 



