1 8 Market Gardenijig. 



distances from eighteen feet to fifty have been recom- 

 mended. The feeling grows more in favor of the 

 greater width, from continued observation of the suc- 

 cessful working of drains so placed. Still the author's 

 opinion, formed from over twenty years of personal 

 experience and observation of such works, and with due 

 consideration of views published by others, is that we 

 should hardly ever, where a soil needs draining at all, 

 leave widths exceeding forty feet. 



He further says that, in the lighter loams, there has 

 been good success in following Prof. Mapes' rule : 

 that "three-foot drains should be placed twenty feet 

 apart, and for each additional foot in depth the distance 

 may be doubled. For instance, four-foot drains may be 

 forty feet apart, and five-foot drains eighty feet apart." 

 But with reference to this greater distance, — eighty 

 feet, — it is not to be recommended in stiff clays for any 

 depth of drain. When it is necessar}^ on account of 

 underlying rock or by reason of insufficient fall, tc^go 

 only three feet deep, the drains should be as near to- 

 gether as twenty feet 



No great exactness can be had m such a matter as 

 this. In consideration of the variety of soils, and our 

 inability to measure the exact amount of water to be 

 drawn off (which is never a constant quantity), or even 

 the rate at which it may reach the drains by percola- 

 tion through any given soil, uniform depths and dis- 

 tances cannot of course be prescribed with any pretence 

 to theoretical precision. A general judgment made up 

 from experience and observation is all that can be 

 offered. 



