366 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



rain coming and carrying this heat down in its descent, 

 among the roots of plants. 



Lest some may think that in a dry year we shall be more 

 subject to drouth if we underdrain, I will say : Experience 

 has proved the result to be exactly the reverse, the rationale 

 of which is plain when we consider what takes place in a 

 drained soil. We have seen that as the water is withdrawn 

 from the soil by the drains underneath, the air, which is 

 filled with vapor, follows down into the cooler particles of 

 earth, and is condensed into liquid, and furnishes water for the 

 plants. We can easily test the truth of this by taking two 

 boxes of dry earth, one four inches deep, the other eighteen 

 inches deep, and exposing them to a hot, mid-day sun. The 

 shallow box will dry through, while the deep one will con- 

 dense moisture from the air in its lower particles, and in a 

 short time become moister than when placed there. 



In addition to what moisture is thus condensed in all 

 porous soils, moisture is continually drawn up by absorption. 

 All other circumstances being similar, plants will be affected 

 by drouth in proportion as their roots are long or short, and 

 nothing tends to deep rooting like under- draining. The 

 past fall, having to excavate a piece of land, we found this- 

 tle roots eight or nine feet below the siu-face, and leaving 

 the work a few days on account of wet weather, to our sur- 

 prise we found those roots had put forth leaves. I have 

 frequently found carrots grown in an under-drained piece 

 of land that measured eighteen inches in length, with the 

 ends broken off where they were as large as a pipe-stem. 



]Sear Newark, New Jersey, is a farm owned by Professor 

 Mapes, of superphosphate notoriety, which has been ren- 



