352 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



Mr. Perry Fox: I would have a law to hang every man who worked a day 

 on the roads after the first of August. 



UNDERDRAINING. 



BY A. E. UPTON. 

 [Read at the Fremont Institute, Feb. 4, '87.] 



Suppose a field of twenty acres, with an irregular shaped piece in the center 

 •of four acres, filled with the usual brush, logs, grass and small trees. This 

 can be cleared and worked to a certain extent by the use of an open ditch; 

 but the continual turning around of the team as you come to the ditch, which 

 is almost sure to be cornerwise of the field and usually more or less filled up 

 when wanted most, makes it only a partial relief or substitute for a drain. 

 The fact that you can drive entirely across an underd rained field and have 

 the benefit of the whole of it, instead of wearing out the high land, while the 

 low land (which is the best for many purposes) remains entirely unused, com- 

 mends the use of drain tile to observing minds. When Northern Ohio, Indiana 

 and Southern Michigan were being settled the decaying vegetable matter 

 produced fever and ague. With the clearing and draining of those States 

 this disease and many of similar nature have almost entirely disappeared. 



Some of our legislators have thought that, in the matter of health alone, 

 it would pay the State to drain its low ground. Our cellars being lower than 

 the surrounding vicinity, should be provided with an under drain, otherwise 

 poisonous gases will arise and foul the air breathed by the dwellers above. 

 The fact that a piece of ground that is under drained can stand the drought 

 better than a piece that is not, is a surprise to many. A deep sandy soil or a 

 clay loam soil, with a stratum of gravel, lying from two to five feet below, do 

 not need under draining. 



But all our swamps, marshes, creek and river bottoms, where clay pre- 

 dominates, or in fact any places where water will stand long enough to inter- 

 fere with cultivation or the growth of crops, need underdraining. The proper 

 depth for laying tile is below frost line. 



Tile are faithful servants; they beat the Yankee's honey bees that worked 

 Fourth of July and Sundays; they work night and day the year round, if not 

 prevented by dry weather, and then they are open for a job. 



The question arises. Can underdraining be over done, since in an ordinary 

 alluvial soil the water after a common rain, if tile are properly laid, finds its 

 way to them in two hours, could the rainfall of a county be in this way too 

 suddenly disposed of? The Creator, in the formation of the earth, placed 

 upon its surface lakes, ponds, marshes, creeks and rivers without number. 

 This, undoubtedly, was for a purpose. All the minute channels of water 

 coui-sing through the earth are fed from these sources, and they in turn 

 supply the continuing needs of animal and vegetable life. 



If, for instance, the St. Lawrence basin were thoroughly tile drained, the 

 water after a storm would quickly find its way to the ocean, leaving nothing 

 to supply the natural wants of the earth. Would not this have the effect in 

 "time of making a Sahara of our portion of the earth? Or is it possible that 



