143 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Used they should be placed on strips of rough board, to pre- 

 Veut their sinking into the trench boitona, or being thrown out 

 of the regular fall by being um ermiued by the ruuning water. 

 He has not used the plow for opening his trenches for (he 

 reason that all his work has been let out by contract, and the 

 men have opened tht-m by the spade; charging from 12^ to 

 15 cents per rod for cpsniog and makiag the bottom ready 

 for the tile. The laying and fllliog was done by the owner. 



HIS PRACTICE. 

 His ditches are dug ouly two and a half feet deep, and thir- 

 teen inches wide at the top, sloping inward to the bottom, 

 where they are just wids enough to take the tile. One main 

 drain in which are placed two four-inch tiles set eight inches 

 apart, with an arch piece of tile having a nine inch epan set on 

 top of them, was dug three and a half and four feet deep, and 

 this serves as a conduit for the water from a large system of 

 laterals. Drains should never be left open in winter, for the 

 dirt dislodged by frequent frosts so tills the bottom that it 

 will cost five or six cents per rod to clear them ; and, moreover, 

 the banks often become so crumbled away that the ditch can- 

 not be straddled by a team of horses, and tlius most of the 

 filliug must be done by hand. Mr. Johnston in draining a 

 field commences at the foot of each ditch and works up to the 

 head. He opens his mains first, and then the literal or small 

 drains, but he lays the tiles in the laterals and fills them com- 

 pletely before laying the pipe in the mains. The object of 

 this is to prevent the accumulation of sediment in the mains, 

 wliich would naturally be washed from the laterals ou their 

 first being laid. By couimencing at the foot of each ditch and 

 working upw ard, he can always get and preserve the regular 

 fall, which may be dictated by the features of his field, more 

 easily than by working toward the outlet. A little prac- 

 tice teaches the ditchers how to preserve the grade almost as 

 well 83 if gauges were employed ; but before laying the tiles 

 the iustrument is applied to test the bottom thoroughly. The 

 necessity of this precaution will be apparent to any one who 

 r eflects that if a tile or two in the course of a ditch be set much 

 too high or too low at either end, the water quickly forms a 

 basiu beneath and around, sediment is washed into the ad- 

 joining pipe, and ultimately even the whole bore is filled and 

 the drain stopped. When this happens it will be indicated 

 afier a time by the water appearing at ihe surface of the ground 

 above the spot— drawn upward by capillary attraction. In 

 euch a case the ditch must be reopened, and the tile relaid. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Mr. Johnston says tile-lraining pays for itself in two sea- 

 sons, sometimes in one. Thus, ia 1817 he bought a pie-ie of 

 tert acres to get an outlet for his drains. It was a perfect 

 that it would not give back the seed sown upon it. In 1848 

 quagmire, covered with coarse aquatic grasses, and so unfruitful 

 a crop of corn was taken from it, which was measured and 

 found to be eightij bushels per acre ; and as — bcciuse of the 

 I'ish faiaine — corn was worth 1 dol. per bushel that year, 

 this crop paid not only all the expense of drainage, but the 

 first cost of the land as well. 



Another piec2 of twenty acre', adjoining the farm of the 

 late John Uelafield, was wet, and would never bring more 

 thin ten bushels of corn per acre. This was drained at a 

 great cost— nearly 30 dols. per acre. Tiie first crop after this 

 was 83 bushels and some odd pounds per acre. It was 

 wfighed and measured by Mr, DelaQild, and the County So- 

 ciety awarded a premium to Mr. Johnston. Eight acres and 

 some rods of this hind at one side averaged 91 bushels, or the 

 trifling increase of 81 bushels per acre over what it would 

 bear before those insignificant clay tiles were buried in the 

 ground. But this increa?e of crop is not the- only profit of 

 drainage ; for Mr. Johnston says that on drained la- d one- 

 half the usual quantity of manure sufl!iceB to give maximum 

 crops. It is not ditiicult to find a reason for this. When the 

 soil is sodden with water, air cannot enter to any cxteut; and 

 hence oxygen cannot eat olf the surfaces of soil-particles and 

 prepared food for plants : thus the plant must in great mea- 

 sure depend on the manure for sustenance, and of course the 

 more this is the case, the more manure must be applied to get 

 good crops. This is one reason, but thsre ureotherj wLish we 

 ini[;ht aflduce if oi'e good one were not sufficient. 



Mr. Johnston says he never made money until he drained, 

 and so convinced is he of the benefits accruing from the prac- 



tice that he would not hesitate— as he did not when the result 

 was much more uncertain than at present — to borrow money 

 to drain. Drains well-laid endure ; but unless a farmer intends 

 doing the job well he had best leave it alone and grow poor, 

 and move out West, and all that sort of thing. Occupiers 

 of apparently dry land are not safe in concluding that they 

 need not go to the expense of draining, for if they will but 

 dig a three-foot ditch in even the dryest foil, water will be 

 found in the bottom at the end of eight hours, and if it 

 does come, then draining will pay for itself si.eedily. For in- 

 stance, Mr. Johnston had a lot of thirteen acres on the shore 

 of the lake, where the bank at the foot of the lot vias per- 

 pendicular to the depth of thirty or forty feet. He sup- 

 posed from this f;ict, and because the surface seemed very 

 drj% that he had no need to drain it. But somehow he lost 

 his crops continually, and as he had put them in as well as 

 he knew how, he naturally concluded that he must lay some 

 tile. So he engaged an Irishman to open a ditch, with a 

 proviso that if water should come into it in eight hours, he 

 would drain the entire piece. The top soil was so hard and 

 dry as to need an application of tho pick, but at the depth 

 of a foot it was found to be so wet and soft tliat a spado 

 could easily be sunk to the entire depth of the handle. The 

 ditches were made, and in less than the specified time a 

 brave lot of water flowed in. The piece was thoroughly 

 drained, and the result was an immense crop of corn. The 

 field has regularly borne sixty to reventy bushels since. 

 Corn was planted for a first crop in this and the preceding 

 instances because a paying crop is obtained in one year, 

 whereas if wheat were sown it would be necessary to wait 

 two seasons. He always druins when the field is in grass, if 

 possible, for the ditches can be made more easily ; and 

 spring is chosen that the labour may not be interfered with 

 by frosts. 



To show how necessary it is to avoid planting trees over 

 drains, we quote a case in point. In a lot adjoining his 

 house are four large elms which are marked to be felled, 

 and for the reason that the lot was formerly so wet that a 

 pond of water stood upon it in winter, and throughout the 

 season the children skated and slid upon it. It was drained, 

 and all went well for a time; but after three years Mr. 

 Johnston found his drains dicl not discharge properly, and 

 that in certain places the water came to the surface, so a^ to 

 destroy or greatly lessen the crop above them. He could 

 not account for the circumstance until he dug down to the 

 drain at each of these spots, when, to his surprise, he found 

 the tile completely choked with the fibrous roots of the elms, 

 which, naturally seeking the subterranean supply of water, 

 had so accumulated in mass as to stop a two-inch bore of 

 tile. 



Mr. Johnston does not t.iink there ar6 a hundred acres 

 in any neighbourhood that do not need draining, and would 

 not pay well for it. Perhaps this may be thought an 

 extreme assertion, but it is nearer the fact than most of us 

 have been aware. Mr. Johnston is no rich man who has 

 carried a favourite hobby vv'ithout regard to cost or profit. 

 He is a hard-working Scotch farmer, who commenced a poor 

 man, borrowed money to drain his land, hai gradually 

 extended his operations, and is now reaping the benefits, in 

 having crops of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He is a 

 grey-haired Nestor, who, after accumulating the experience 

 of a long life, is now, at seventy-five years of age, written to 

 by strangers in every State of the Union for information, 

 not only in drainage matters, but all cognate branches 

 of farming. He sits in his homestead a veritable Humboldt 

 in his way, dispensing information cheerfully throuch our 

 agricultural papers, and to private correspondents, of whom 

 he has recordecl one hundred and sixty-four who applied to 

 him last year. His opinions are, therefore, worth more than 

 those of a host of theoretical men, who write without prac- 

 tice. He says that the retrogression of our agriculture in 

 the olden States is to be accounted for in our lack of drain- 

 age, poor feeding of stock, which results ia giving a small 

 quantity of poor manure, and in not keeping enough to 

 make manure. He applies 100 loads of manure to the acre 

 at the beginning of a rotation, and this lasts throughout the 

 course. He learned from his grandfather that no farmer 

 could afford to keep any animal that did not improve on his 

 hands, and that as soon as it was in good marketable condi- 

 tion it should be sold and replaced by another. Thii theory 



