AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 157 



to give maximum crops. It is not difficult to find a reason 

 for this. When the soil is sodden with water, air cannot 

 enter to any extent, and hence oxygen cannot eat off the 

 surfaces of soil-particles and prepare food for plants ; thus 

 the plant must in great measure depend on the manure for 

 sustenance, and of course the more this is the case, the 

 more manure must be applied to get good crops. This is 

 one reason, but there are others which&quot; we might adduce if 

 one good one were not sufficient. 



&quot; Mr. Johnston says he never made money until he 

 drained, and so convinced is he of the benefits accruing 

 from the practice, that he would not hesitate as he did 

 not when the result was much more uncertain than at 

 present to borrow money to drain. Drains well laid 

 endure, but unless a farmer intends doing the job well, he 

 had best leave it alone, and grow poor, and move out West, 

 and all that sort of thing. Occupiers of apparently dry 

 land are not safe in concluding that they need not go to 

 the expense of draining, for if they will but dig a three- 

 foot ditch in even the dryest soil, water will be found in 

 the bottom at the end of eight hours, and if it does come, 

 then draining will pay for itself speedily. For instance, 

 Mr. Johnson had a lot of thirteen acres on the shore of the 

 lake, where the bank at the foot of the lot was perpendic 

 ular to the depth of thirty or forty feet. He supposed 

 from this fact, and because the surface seemed very dry, that 

 he had no need to drain it. But somehow he lost his crops 

 continually, and as he had put them in as well as he knew 

 how, he naturally concluded that he must lay some tile. 

 So he engaged an Irishman to open a ditch, with a proviso, 

 that if water should come into it in eight hours, he would 

 drain the entire piece. The top soil was so hard and dry 

 as to need an application of the pick, but at the depth of a 

 foot it was found to be so wet and soft that a spade could 



