AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 215 



as to cut them up In their incipient stages, Mr. Eeed, of Elizabethtown, 

 calls a loecd on his place a curiosity. He never waits for them to grow. 

 Labor and science can do all, but a mere laborer and mere chemist cannot 

 do it. 



Judge French of New Hampshire, who is here, just returned from agri- 

 cultural study of Europe, is now about to give us lessons of high value in 

 his book ; it goes the whole depth in the drainage system, and without that 

 I would not accept as a gift the best farm in our republic. We do make 

 some beautiful cottages, and about them nothing to eat (comparatively). 



Hon. H. E. French, of Exeter, was called up, and said, that England 

 had convinced him of one thing, and that is, that successful agriculture 

 demands capital. He had admired a Lincoln Heath farm, where a light- 

 house was maintained ninety years ago, sixty feet high, to direct travellers 

 over its gloomy and barren wilds. A farm of a thousand acres costs, for 

 rent and taxes, about ten thousand dollars per annum, and requires a 

 capital of fifty thousand dollars to render it profitable. Strict calculations 

 are made of every thing, especially as to the manures. When by their 

 system an acre is made to yield thirty bushels of wheat, they find that to 

 raise two bushels more costs, in manures, &c,, too much for profit. I saw 

 land reclaimed from the sea water raising fifty-six bushels of wheat an 

 acre. We have lost all knowledge of the inglorious art so long triumphant 

 among us, that of skinning land! get all its vegetable element out of it, 

 sell them all and leave the land to starve ! We formerly skinned New 

 England, but starving not being as good as eating, we have got to work 

 among our numberless rocks and boulders, tilled, manured, and got up to 

 viore bushels of ivheat on an acre than the glorious west ! Some people 

 w onder how we can build such nice houses and live in them ! We have 

 left off skinning the land and taken to manure, to drainage and thorough 

 tillage, and with all these well done, we all can build those beautiful cot- 

 tages so fitly mentioned by my learned friend Professor Mapes, and have 

 beautiful farms all around them to load their tables with the world's best 

 things. 



President Pell. — I have made on my farm one hundred miles of drain, 

 chiefly with stone ; I have also tiles, some of them glazed, others porous. 

 I found that chesnut planks, two inches thick, laid on the bottoms of my 

 ditches, to build upon, are good. I have, in some spots, made drains seven 

 feet deep ! 



Prof. Nash. — Plants, occasionally, fill drains with their roots. 



Mr. Meigs. — A well near a willow was filled with roots so that water 

 could not be drawn by the pump, near the corner of Twenty-first street 

 and Eighth avenue, some years ago. 



President has traced roots eighty feet ! 



Mr. Bruce. — A poplar tree choked a well in W^all street, near it, fifty 

 years ago ! Spoiled the water ! 



Mr. Lawton moved as subjects for the next meeting " Drains and Small 

 farms." Adopted. 



