292 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



may be readily found by multiplying together the mean width, depth, and 

 length. For example, if your drain is three hundred yards long, and the 

 cutting three feet deep, twenty inches wide at the top, and four inches at 

 the bottom, the mean width would be twelve inches, (or the half of the sum, 

 twenty and four.) and if you multiply one hundred, the length, by one, the 

 depth in yards, and by one-third, the mean width in yards, the product 

 would be one hundred cubic yards. 



Draining on solid clay, free from stones, may be made at a cheaper rate 

 per rod, in length, than on any other variety of soil, as its firmness per- 

 mits the labor to be accomplished with narrow spades, and the removal of 

 small quantities of soil. 



Draining sands, gravels, or clays, in which veins of sand are found, is 

 much more expensive, because broad spades are used and a large amount 

 of soil must be removed. And draining stony soils is more expensive still, 

 because it becomes necessary to use the pick, which adds much to the 

 expense. If the first six inches is turned up by the plow, a man will dig 

 100 rods of drain through wet, stony, hard ground, three feet deep, twenty 

 inches wide at the top, and three inches wide at the bottom, in thirty days, 

 counting ten hours to the day. One man in two days will lay the tiles, 

 and in eight days fill up the drain. 



On a loam' soil with a clay subsoil, drained to the depth of four feet, the 

 upper six inches plowed out, one man can easily dig, one day with another, 

 three and a half rods per day, throwing out ten and a half cubic yards of 

 soil. 



There was a draining plow exhibited at the World's Fair in London, 

 which was considered to hold the next place to the American reaper. It 

 was worked by two horses attached to a capstan, which, by an invisible 

 wire rope, drew towards it a low framework, leaving a narrow slit cut on 

 the surface of the ground. On examination it proved to have dragged 

 through the slit, behind it, a string of pipes at the depth of four feet below 

 the surface, v.'hich were firmly fixed in the ground, but it did not give the 

 drain a uniform decline. After the first trial before the committee, in a 

 clay subsoil with a gentle descent, the success was perfect. And it drained 

 an acre with Ifinch pipes, 33 feet apart, 2| feet deep, for $12.62^. 



I had occasion once to take up some pipes, through which a spring run 

 of thirty gallons per minute, and I found to my amazement the roots of the 

 Canada thistle growing luxuriantly thirty feet long, and a willow forty, 

 which would soon have entirely choked the pipe. 



You will find that the more vegetable matter and clay that a soil has in 

 it, the more it will contract and swell, in alternate dry and wet weather. 

 This contraction in clay soils, frequently presses upon tender roots injuri- 

 ously ; while a sandy soil has the same bulk, whether wet or dry, and 

 therefore the roots are compressed uniformly in all weather, and may be 

 thrown out, undisturbed, in all directions. 



There are thousands of farmers who have never had any opportunities 

 of observing the effects of perfect drainage, and the great difference be- 



