SUBSOIL-PLOUGHING CONNECTED WITH THOROUGH-DRAINING. 133 



breaking up the pan, which was impervious to water ; whilst the 

 rubble below was highly porous, and afforded a ready passage to 

 the stagnant water which caused the previous sterility.&quot; 



5. IMPORTANCE OF SUBSOILING AND DRAINING, AND THEIR AP 

 PLICATION TO THE UNITED STATES. I hope no apology will be 

 required by my readers for having gone so much at large into 

 this subject. The thorough-draining and subsoil-ploughing of 

 land constitute, in my judgment, the great modern improvement 

 of English husbandry ; and in their more extended application 

 to lands which are now comparatively waste and profitless, or 

 at best very restricted in their produce, and to lands which 

 have been long cultivated, the productive capacities of which 

 have been very imperfectly brought out, and to lands which 

 have been productive, and hitherto supposed to have reached 

 their maximum of yield, they seem destined to increase the 

 products of the country beyond any calculations which have 

 yet been made. 



That such an improvement is applicable to many parts of the 

 United States, I mean especially the older states, where land has 

 already reached a high value, cannot be doubted. I know many 

 farms and many tracts of country, where, by such a process, the 

 product of the land might be expected to be doubled ; and I have a 

 confident hope that, in parts of the country where wheat now is 

 liable to be thrown out by the severity of the frosts, or to suffer 

 blight from the wetness of the soil, to which, in many cases, blight 

 is to be attributed, we may, by means of this great improvement, 

 be enabled to grow wheat with success. Our crops of potatoes, 

 which we generally plant by preference in low lands, are often 

 destroyed by excessive wetness arising from heavy rains, which 

 remain on the top of the soil, for want of ready and sufficient 

 drainage. I have known, in repeated instances, the seed to be 

 destroyed in the spring ; and the crop in the autumn to be rotted, 

 in such cases, after it had become ready for the harvest. 



6. OBJECTIONS TO THIS IMPROVEMENT. I foresee only two or 

 three objections to the adoption of this improvement in the 

 United States. In laying drains of clay pipes or tiles, the very 

 severe frosts, especially in the northern parts of the country, are 

 liable to break them to pieces at the outlet of such drains ; but 



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