144 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Stone. This does the work. I have five of these barrels sunk on 

 the place, and they are a success. 



In the place of open ditches, grown up with weeds and bushes, 

 running- through the place, and patches of ground here and there 

 where berry plants or apple trees would not grow, I now have one 

 field ; can drive the length and breadth of it with no hindrance from 

 open ditches ; there is no waste land, and plants are growing on all 

 the low places. 



Counting the price of tile and the labor of laying, it may seem 

 expensive to some, but I am satisfied with my investment and have 

 been repaid for the time and money spent. 



Col. C. L. Watrous (Iowa) : The ditching I have done — and I 

 have done some miles of it — has been done with tile, and I would 

 not think of having anything else but tile, and if a man should ofifer 

 to come on my land and offer to make an open ditch for the water 

 to run, and do it for nothing, I would want that man to keep off. 

 Now, in draining a marsh any amount of water that can be made 

 to run through an open ditch can be made to run through tile if you 

 use tile large enough and enough of them, if the tile are of proper 

 size and placed at proper intervals ; they will take the water from 

 any ground anywhere except, I think, Niagara. Any of the 

 sloughs and marshes of this western country can be drained in this 

 way, and, as the gentleman who read the last paper said, with com- 

 fort and with profit. I hope that any one who has any land he wishes 

 to drain will consider the matter very seriously before he makes any 

 open ditches. 



' Mr. R. H. L. Jewett : I would like to inquire whether any of 

 these gentlemen present have found any difficulty in the freezing of 

 tile drains and damming up the water. We have a little place where 

 we have no place of draining it except by an open ditch, but from 

 observations of culverts along the roads I noticed that tile drains 

 freeze up in the spring. What advantage would there be under 

 those circumstances? 



Mr. S. D. Richardson : I have had a little experience in tile 

 draining where there was not much fall. I started the ditch and cal- 

 culated to dig it to water level and put in my tile. There came a rain 

 in the winter, about New Years, and it froze up all my tile, and in 

 the spring I had to dig it all out. The next spring I selected a box 

 2x3 feet, and as my tile was only two feet underground I calculated 

 when it came freezing weather in winter I would go down there 

 where the box was placed at the outlet and empty the tile and I would 

 have no trouble. I had another piece of ground where the water 

 always stood as soon as there was a little more rain than usual, still 

 it was not so wet the grass would not grow, but I managed to get 

 tile through there two feet deep. I put it right through a slough 

 two feet deep, and in the center of the slough I put down a box about 

 4x5 feet, and when the water runs through the tile it runs into that 

 box, and since I have done that I have not had any trouble from 

 freezing. A year ago last summer we had about sixteen inches of 



