DRAINAGE. 127 



DRAINAGE. 



DRAINAGE, or the removal of the surplus water from the soil by artificial means, 

 may be accomplished by the use of open ditches, covered trenches, plank or stone 

 drains, tiles, etc., the best and most popular method being tile draining. 



Perhaps no part of farm husbandry pays a larger per cent, of profit on the money 

 invested than proper and judicious drainage, where the conditions are such that lands will 

 be benefited by this system, since it not only removes stagnant water from lands, but relieves 

 them of their excess of moisture, rendering them productive, and more healthful to both 

 vegetable and animal life. It also deepens the soil, makes it more friable, and by drawing 

 the water from the surface, not only adapts it to earlier cultivation in the spring, thereby 

 insuring an earlier and more abundant crop, and also prepares it to be worked advantageously 

 in the autumn, but the surface rain-water, being warmer than the soil, such drainage increases 

 the temperature of the earth as it sinks downward. 



Mr. Parks, the English Agricultural Engineer, found by making simultaneous obser 

 vations on a drained portion of a field, that from a mean of thirty-five observations, during 

 the spring and early summer, the drained soil, at seven inches depth, was ten degrees 

 warmer than the undrained, at the same depth. The highest temperature of the un drained 

 soil was forty-seven degrees, while that of the drained went up to sixty-six degrees at seven 

 inches, and forty-eight degrees at thirty-one inches, after a thunder storm. A wet soil can 

 never be properly pulverized, hence, cannot be well tilled; it is also always cold; and as drain 

 age renders the land warmer, the roots of plants which will never go below the water-line, 

 always strike deeper in under-drained soils, which explains the fact, often surprisingly mani 

 fest, why lands well under-drained should endure the evil effects of a drouth better than those 

 not drained at all. This mystery is solved when we consider that roots in such soils strike 

 so much deeper than in lands not drained, that they are constantly in a moist soil, however 

 dry the surface may be ; besides such lands are more porous and permeable to the dews and 

 showers. Under-draining also prevents surface washing, by allowing the water to percolate 

 through the soil, and thus whatever fertilizing material it contains is retained. It renders 

 winter killing of crops less liable, and preserves a more uniform degree of moisture in the 

 soil, since it not only causes its saturation with water to be impossible, but keeps it in such a 

 pulverized and porous condition, that in times of drouth it absorbs moisture from the air and 

 never becomes baked and hard, thus the evil effects of extremes of wet and dry seasons are 

 avoidable. Much land otherwise almost worthless for cultivation has become by this means 

 Very valuable. Lands well under-drained can also be used with safety in hauling loads and 

 are less liable to injury from the treading of cattle, &c. 



Thornton, an eminent English authority, sums up the benefits of drainage as follows: 

 &quot; An earlier seed-time and harvest, better crops, a healthier live stock and an improved style 

 of husbandry, are the usual and well-known sequence of judiciously-conducted drainage 

 operations. In short, the most experienced and skillful agriculturists now declare with one 

 consent, that good drainage is an indispensable preliminary to good cultivation.&quot; 



In England and Scotland the improvement of lands by drainage has long been practiced, 

 and it is by no means a modern improvement, though it has comparatively but recently been 

 reduced to a system based upon scientific principles. The Romans were careful to keep their 

 arable lands dry by means of open trenches, and there are some indications of their having 

 used covered drains for the same purpose. English literature shows that it is at least more 

 than two centuries ago that Captain Walter Blithe wrote the following: 



&quot;Superfluous and venomous water which lyeth in the earth and much occasioneth boggi- 

 nesse, mirinesse, rushes, flags, and other filth, is indeed the chief cause of barrenesse in any 

 land of this nature. . . . Drayning is an excellent and chief est means for their reducement; 

 and for the depth of such draynes, I cannot possibly bound, because I have not time and oppor- 



