FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 445 



In acquiring this special training the drainage engineer will draw 

 from almost every profession and science. From agriculture, first of all, 

 he will learn the theory of the soil and of plant life, so that he can un- 

 derstand the physical, chemical and bacterial conditions of the soil 

 necessary to produce the best crops and the exact effect of drainage on all 

 these points. From geology he will learn to determine the nature of th^ 

 underground strata which he may encounter in different localities. From 

 physics he will learn the laws of underground water and its movements. 

 From botany he will learn to judge of moisture conditions by the species 

 of plants growing in different localities. From medicine he will learn how 

 drainage may improve the public health by removing miasmatic emana- 

 tions, which from the earliest settlement of the country have poisoned 

 entire neighborhoods. T.o all of these sciences and professions and to 

 many others the competent drainage engineer must acknowledge his in- 

 debtedness. 



This paper has not been written to give instruction to drainage 9n 

 gineers, to whom it would be more fitting that the writer should apply 

 for instruction. The object of the paper is mainly to aid the general 

 public interested in drainage in Iowa in acquiring information concern- 

 ing the importance and necessity of the drainage engineer's work. To 

 accomplish this object, however, it seems necessary to discuss some of 

 the details of the drainage engineer's work, for the land owner con- 

 templating drainage wishes to knowi exactly what he has a right to ex- 

 pect from the engineers he employs, and exactly how much engineering- 

 work it will pay to have done. We will, therefore, glance briefly at 

 some of the detail of drainage engineering work; first in tile drainag'c 

 and second in the construction of large drainage ditches. In tile drain- 

 age we have to deal with the drainage of comparative small tracts oi 

 land, usually individual farms, while for open ditches the case is usually 

 that of the drainage of large tracts. 



In the case of tile drains, the engineer, before construction, has to 

 make the survey, prepare the plans and specifications, and set the grade 

 stakes. In many cases, indeed, perhaps usually in past practice in this 

 State for single farms, the surveys have consisted simply of a line or 

 two of levels, the plans of nothing but a profile (if even so much was 

 furnished), and no specifications at all have been prepared. The writer 

 wishes to be plainly understood as strongly advocating a great improve 

 ment in this respect. Fromi the very first careful forethought should be 

 given, riot merely to the perhaps sm.aH amount of tiling to be put in at 

 the time, but to a final comprehensive plan for the entire portion of the 

 farm which may eventually require drainage. Without such forethought 

 from the first, the final result will be a patchwork arrangement, not 

 worthy the name of system, in which the different par«^s can not prop 

 erly do their work, and of which the total (^ost is far greater than would 

 have been the cost of a complete and well planned system. In hun- 

 dreds of cases in this State, doubtless, the land owner has found that the 

 early drains he built were too small or too shallow to drain more dis- 

 tant acres later, so that he has had the work to do over. It will pay. 

 when the first survevs are made, to have measurements taken and levels 



