SUBSOILING AS A PREPARATION FOR FRUIT CULTURE. 189 



those mixtures after being exposed to the weather for a few years, I 

 raised melons that w^ere very satisfactory to the boys of my neigh- 

 borhood. (Laughter.) 



The President : The objection I have to the pocket gopher is, 

 that he does not discriminate sufficiently ; he seems to choose my ap- 

 ple trees and works more upon them than he does at the business of 

 subsoiling. In the last two winters he has taken about twenty good 

 trees three inches in diameter. The first I noticed they were leaning 

 over a little, and the next day a little more, and upon making an ex- 

 amination I found the pocket gopher had been there and cut ofif the 

 roots irregularly five or six inches below the surface. He makes 

 clean work of it. If he begins below where the roots begin to branch 

 out, he takes every root. I have tried to look up his favorable rec- 

 ord to see if we cannot find enough per contra to overbalance the 

 injury he has done. 



DRAINAGE OF MARSH LAND AND ITS USE IN 

 GARDENING. 



W. I.. TAYI,OR, WTCHFIELD. 



This is a subject that has claimed the attention of the leading 

 agriculturists, wherever land is valuable, since the earliest settlement 

 of our country. 



Not only is drainage beneficial from an agricultural point of 

 view, but as a sanitary measure its value cannot be overestimated. 

 Who can determine the value of drainage when it not only changes 

 marshes into arable land but causes the deadly malaria to disappear 

 forever, thus leaving our homes healthful and little ones happy? 

 Too often the removal of a loved one from our midst is called a 

 "dispensation of Providence" wdien the main cause was a marsh 

 near the house, which ought to have been drained. 



The home of my boyhood in eastern Illinois was a land con- 

 taining many ponds and marshes. From my earliest recollections 

 I can hardly remember a time when some one in our neighborhood 

 did not have typhoid fever, and ague was so common that almost 

 every one had a "shake" each year and sometimes for many months. 

 Then they began to drain the marshes and tile the low lands and, 

 oh, what a change it made in the healthfulness ! Fever and ague al- 

 most disappeared, and the cases of typhoid fever were few and far 

 between. 



By the use of tile drainage the marshes where I used to fish are 

 said to produce a hundred bushels of corn per acre.' 



My own experience of drainage extends over a period of thirty 

 years. There was a large marsh on the farm where I now reside, 

 and it was formerly inhabited by fish, muskrats and mosquitoes, 

 and the surrounding lands were too wet for cultivation. Four hun- 



