Drainage in New York. 



243 



duce net returns in such cases has probably been more effective than any 

 other one thing to prevent the more general and thorough adoption of the 

 practice. Necessarily the improvement involves a very considerable ex- 

 penditure of money per acre and the common feeling that the tile must 

 be placed near together and at regular intervals to be at all effective, has 

 deterred many from attempting the improvement. Drainage, like almost 

 any other farm practice, cannot be performed by a " rule of thumb " but 

 requires intelligence and care to adapt it to the local conditions of soil, 

 rainfall, climate, sur- 

 face features a n d 

 seepage in order that 

 the largest net re- 

 turns may be secured, 

 (i) JnJin Johnston. 

 New York may well 

 take pride in the fact 

 that she was the pio- 

 neer in America in 

 the practice of tile 

 drainage for agricul- 

 tural purposes. That 

 distinction was given 

 to her by ]\Ir. John 

 Johnston, whose like- 

 ness at the age of 

 eighty years appears 

 on this page. There 

 is the further and 

 more important dis- 

 tinction that j\Ir. 

 Johnston was espe- 

 cially successful in 

 the practice and the great increase in crops, which resulted on his farm 

 after he had installed tile drains, may still be c^uoted as among the most 

 clear and forcible examples to be had anywhere of the money benefits 

 as well as the personal satisfaction which results from tile drainage. 



He was a Scotchman who came to America and purchased a farm 

 about four miles southeast of Geneva, in Seneca county, in 1821. It may 

 be presumed that his methods of tillage and of general farm management 

 were about as careful and thorough in the early years of his venture as in 

 subsecjuent years. Hut he says, " I never made any money at farming until 

 I had tile drained my land." He laid his first tile in 1837 and the 300 

 acres of land which he farmed contained at the time of his death in 1880, 



John JoJinston at the age of <So years. 

 He laid the first tile drains in America about 1837. 

 (From an old file of American Agriculturist.) 



