42 BUILDING SITES 



Trees requiring much moisture, which grow close to streams or wet 

 places, usually have their finest development when standing several 

 feet above the level of the water in ground that is perfectly drained 

 by the proximity of a watercourse, and which at the same time affords 

 the roots an opportunity to drink at will when deep enough. 



No thorough gardener, or intelligent planter, is content with 

 surface or open-ditch drainage. It is always insufficient, bungling, 

 and untidy. The most perfect drainage is that formed by a gravelly 

 soil underlaid with coarser gravel to a considerable depth. This 

 is Nature's sub-soil drainage; and it is a well-known fact that 

 soils but meagrely supplied with vegetable and mineral food for 

 plants "poor soils" as they are often, called, when judged by 

 their appearance rather than their results will yield better annual 

 returns in crops than the richest undrained lands. Where Nature 

 has provided this sub-soil drainage, other drains may not be neces- 

 sary ; but there are few localities where the sub-soil is so perfect 

 as to render artificial drainage superfluous. Where cellars are 

 found to be always dry, though not provided with drains, the 

 natural drainage may be considered perfect ; but it will not do to 

 infer that because one spot is dry, without drains, that another a 

 hundred feet from it, on a different altitude or exposure, is equally 

 favored ; though large districts of country are occasionally found 

 where good natural drainage is the rule, and springy sub-soils the 

 exception. The writer has observed some very suggestive phe- 

 nomena illustrating the relative efficiency of sub-soil and surface 

 drainage. On the same slope of one large field, where the soil is a 

 friable clay, one half the field had been sub-drained with lines 

 of tile thirty feet apart and three feet deep, and the surface left 

 level between them ; the other half was plowed into " lands," or 

 ridges of the same width, sloping down to ditches in the middle 

 which were two feet below the level of the highest ground between 

 them. After heavy rains the surface of the open-ditch part of the 

 lot always glistened with moisture and was sticky for several days, 

 although the descent was so rapid that the water seemed to run off 

 immediately. On the sub-drained part, level as it was, the surface 

 always had a dry spongy appearance, was free from superfluous 

 moisture, and ready to be worked and pleasant to be walked upon 



