102 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



FARM DRAINAGE. 



BY PRANK r. ROGERS. 

 (Read at Caro Institute.) 



How to secure au abundant supply of water at places where it is most 

 needed, and how to get rid of too great a supply where it is not only not 

 needed but a positive injury, have long been troublesome questions. So much 

 capital, however, has usually been at command for the water supply that 

 great skill came to its aid, and now almost every city and large town points 

 with pride to its elaborate system of water works. The latter is not usually 

 considered a question of life and death, but merely a question of profit and 

 loss. But were the vast number now in untimely graves because of imper- 

 fectly drained homes commanded to stand forth, we should have facts that 

 would convince the most stubborn that they had much better pay surveyors 

 and ditchers than doctors and undertakers. Yet men persist in their old 

 ways, and when malaria strikes down a near friend they call it mysterious 

 providence and think no more. 



Drainage is an old subject. To attempt anything like a history of the art 

 would be entirely out of place in a short paper, where the more practical parts 

 should be discussed. I think it better to submit to a little tediousness, and 

 speak more in detail of the real work than to attempt a literary paper whose 

 only merit could be to please. Drainage in all its branches is a wonderful 

 subject. We may appreciate enough better its work on the farm to pay for a 

 slight glance at its magnitude. Water in its various forms, it is safe to say, 

 is the worst enemy of the engineer. It hinders his work more than all other 

 evils combined. It breaks over his levees and sweeps barren great areas of 

 country. It trickles down gently and unobserved till the most stable structure 

 is undermined and overthrown. It is the one troublesome element of that most 

 te-oublesome substance, quicksand. Surely it can be as truly said of water as 

 of fire, "It is a good servant but a bad master." It is fast carrying the soil 

 from the mountains to the valleys, from the valleys to the ocean, and is 

 silently but surely at work for the literal fulfillment of the prophecy when 

 "every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill be brought low." 



The removal of surplus water from the farm may seem a more trifling sub- 

 ject yet few of us really appreciate its importance. While land is comparatively 

 cheap, because unmiproved, natural drained lands are readily accessible, the 

 thorough drainage of large tracts will rarely occur. But the time is fast 

 approaching when the subject of farm drainage will claim our most earnest 

 attention. 



As our laud, for the most part, is above the water level of surrounding lakes 

 and streams, the gravity method is all we need to consider, viz. : to construct 

 suitable conduits or drains, through which the surplus water, whether on the 

 surface or in the soil, shall find its way to the nearest point where it will be no 

 longer troublesome. This being true, to discuss the most effectual, durable, 

 and economical methods of constructing these drains will be the object of this 

 paper. 



There are only two methods by which this may be done. 1st, by open 

 ditches of various forms; ^d, by covered drains, for which tiles only should 

 be used. 



