370 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



placing a flat stone on those, leaving much more space, and 

 lessliabilit3^toflllap; then proceed as described before, I saw a 

 field last season, in which this kind of a three feet drain was laid 

 by myself, in 1861, and it was as perfect, to all appearance, 

 as when finished, discharging a large qnantity of water. 



I have l)een told l)_y help tliat I employed, from Ireland, 

 that in the mother conntry drains are often formed by dig- 

 ging a trench the required depth and breaking up stones, 

 the largest of which are not bigger than a partridge's egg, 

 and throwing them in promiscuously to the depth of 

 eighteen inches, then covering lightly with something to 

 keep out the dirt until it gets settled, a precaution necessary in 

 all stone drains. For this purpose I have used sods, laid on with 

 the grass side down, and also coarse litter like swamp hay^ 

 straw or wood shavings. I have also seen a very good main 

 drain formed by scraping out a deep channel, eight or ten 

 feet wide and four or five feet deep, and filling it with large 

 boulders, the size of the capacity of the team to haul, then 

 filled in with snuiller stones, and lastly levelled with snuill 

 field stones, leaving some two feet for dirt to level the sur- 

 face. This kind of a drain was a sort of a " kill two 

 birds with one stone " operation, it being in Massachusetts^ 

 where there were so many stones that we were at our wits* 

 end to get them from the surface of our fields. 



We now come to the cheapest, easiest constructed, and 

 most duralde of all known drains, viz. : tile drains. Tlie 

 tiles are nuide of clay and sand, and bm-ned like common 

 brick. These are of several different patterns, but as time 

 forbids, I will only mention the most approved kind, which 

 is sole tile. It consists of a round bore of the necessary 



