STATE REPORTS OF AGRICULTURE. 507 
except in rich and generous solls. Root crops cannot be raised between 
the trees without breaking up the ground, which destroys their surface 
roots, the most valuable of all roots. The best method is to sow down 
with grass, and manure the surface two or three times a year; the grass 
roots will never run deep, nor exhaust the soil. Twice as many trees 
can thus be grown on ground where root crops are not grown; and, 
if too thick, after twenty years’ growth, they can be thinned out. Any 
one will notice the comparative freedom from debility of trees grown 
for years in grass, over those grown in constantly-stirred soil. Old pear 
trees in Mr. Meehan’s garden, eight to nine feet in circumference, 
always bear when they have any flowers at all, always have healthy foli- 
age, always set most of their blossoms, and drop only fruit punctured 
by insects, enough being always left to produce plentifully ; while any- 
where in soils with regularly-stirred surfaces will be seen innumerables 
flowers with little fruit, and with those which do set great numbers are 
found afterward upon the ground,, having fallen off from no other 
cause than sheer inability in the weakened vital principle to maintain 
them. Leaf blight and innumerable diseases follow excessively weakened 
- vitality ; and though fire-blight, cracking, and other diseases are the 
means of destruction to many thousands of bushels of pears annually, 
debility destroys its tens of thousands. 
Mr. W. P. Pierson, of Onarga, in an article on the philosophy of under- 
draining, says that thought, observation, and recent experiments have 
brought him to the conclusion that— 
The job of finishing up this world can never be completed until a considerable por- 
tion of it is well under-drained ; and I do not know but I am safe in saying, until it is 
well tile-drained. Very certain it is that there are immense and untold resources in 
air and earth, all intended for the benefit of the human race, that can never be made 
available for the purposes for which they were intended until a vast amount of ditch- 
ing isdone. Nature has already provided, on a most magnificent scale, for the under- 
draining of extensive tracts of country ; but the richer, the better, the greater portions 
of earth’s surface can never be drained by any channels now existing, or that nature 
ever can or will provide. This is a task that is assigned to man. 
Mr, Pierson says the fertile soil of Illinois rests generally on a tight 
subsoil, so that, one season with another, a large portion of it is satu- 
rated with water six to eight months in the year. What is not satu- 
rated is damp and cold, from the presence of stagnant water in the tight 
subsoil. Hence it is that, under the present system of cultivation, not 
one foot in five of this unrivaled soil can ever be made practically avail- 
able for the purposes of agriculture ; and where only fifteen, twenty, or 
thirty bushels of corn are grown, sixty, eighty, and one hundred busheis 
could be raised with less labor and more eertainty. Here, too, is the 
true source of many of the diseases that sweep through orchards and 
vineyards, blasting the hopes of the cultivator. Relief to these draw- 
backs, to a large extent, will be found in the adoption and execution, as 
far as time and means will permit, of a thorough system of tile-draining 
in conjunction with deep and thorough culture. Mr, Pierson, in conclu- 
sion, says: 
Draw off the cold and stagnant waters; check the immense draught from the warmth 
of the soil by evaporation; set in motion the bright steel clipper, the roller, the har- 
row, the cultivator, and the subsoiler; send the richly-laden rain-water, the warm, 
well-freighted atmosphere, and the life-giving dew.coursing down through the soil to 
the utmost depths to which vegetation can penetrate ; let in every clement from the 
surface that will hasten the chemical decompositions and combinations by which the 
elements in air and in earth become available for the support of plant life; let nature 
have free course and do her legitimate work, and results will be witnessed on the 
prairies, in the grain-field, the meadow, the orchard, the vineyard, that will astonish 
the world and gladden the hearts of the tillers of the soil. 
‘Mr. Parker Earle, of South Pass, thinks that drainage and deep culture 
