TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 141 



tile, escaped entirely from the effects of that drouth, and I have but once 

 in forty years' farming ever secured a heavier crop. I have two fields 

 well tiled, and one not tiled at all, and the tiled fields this season yielded 

 more than double per acre, and a quality doubly good ; and I believe that 

 any one can overcome our drouths on all land admitting of tiling, by 

 thoroughly tile-draining, by opening the pores of the ground and keep- 

 ing it in condition to receive the moisture that the atmosphere gives us. 



Mr. Kehoe: I have had experience in tiling. I have a farm of 200 

 acres or more; and from what experience I have had with tiling, I would 

 rather have the same amount of tile rather than have a thousand-dollar 

 plant for irrigating from the river. I can see that on this soil that I have 

 drained, whicli has a heavy subsoil of clay, mostly, and in some 

 places loam, it has made the soil different. Right through the hard 

 land it would make it lighter, and it would retain the moisture a great 

 deal better, always producing good crops of any kind; and on low land, 

 where the water settled and ran in, where nothing used to grow, I would 

 get abundant crops. 



Mr. Rice: I would like to know in regard to the depth of tile. Prof. 

 Bailey said, "Put it in deep." We have three men in our vicinity who are 

 cranks on putting tile in deeply. It is a quicksand soil and they put 

 them in six to eight feet deep. They now think they have made a 

 mistake. 



Prof. Bailey: I think they have. I simply threw that out as a sug- 

 gestion. I should say that three and a half to four feet is supposed to 

 be about the ideal depth for tile. It will depend much upon the land, 

 but I should think six or seven feet too deep. 



Mr. Willard: The best tiled land in the state of New York was laid 

 fifty years ago by John Johnson, It is working perfectly today, but the 

 best tiling that has been laid in the past twenty years, in New York, is 

 where the tile has not only been laid to a good depth, but then filled in 

 with cobble stone, so as to bring all the cobble stone eighteen inches or 

 two feet above the tile, insuring a percolation of the water; the soil will 

 never pack badly about the tile, but it will insure perfect drainage. The 

 most unpromising land I ever saw, that was absolutely not worth a penny 

 per acre for any purpose, before it was tiled, today is the quickest land 

 that can be worked on that farm. The tile were put in three and a half 

 feet deep, on a retentive bottom, so retentive as to be almost impossible 

 to get a pick into it. William Brown Smith of Syracuse, whom I have 

 regarded as one of the best horticulturists I knew, secured for years and 

 years the wastefrom the iron foundries — the slagfsomeof you know what 

 it is; it answers the same purpose as the cobble stone, and he has drawn 

 thousands of loads of that, to put in in connection with his tile. Prof. 

 Bailev said that if rye was left until too late in the spring, and plowed 

 under in that condition, it would form a layer between the upper and 

 lower stratum of earth, and do damage. Without regard to the question 

 of early or late, this theory is being advocated by at least one prominent 

 fruitgrower, that that layer above the roots of the trees in the orchard 

 prevents the escape of the moisture from below, breaking up the capil- 

 lary attraction, and is for that reason an advantage in the season of 

 drouth. I would like to hear Prof. Bailey's opinion on that. 



