160 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



is remarkable. A variety of white wheat from Missouri, 

 sown more thinly than usual, has yielded 31 bushels to 

 something less than one bushel of seed sown. It headed 

 out a fortnight earlier than the Soule s, but ripened later 

 probably because thinly sown. Mr. Johnston thinks we 

 have been sowing too thickly for fifteen years past upon 

 rich land, and there can be no question but that he is right. 

 Still, it is better to take a medium course between thick 

 and thin sowing, and thus avoid, on the one hand, rust, 

 overcrowding, and waste of seed, and on the other, placing 

 an entire crop at the mercy of insects which may attack it. 

 &quot; A too common error with improving farmers is that of 

 using too small tile for main drains, and too large for 

 laterals. Those accustomed to the roomy conduits of ordi 

 nary stone drains, suppose that nothing less than a three- 

 inch bore will conduct the drainage from the surface into 

 the mains, and curiously enough the same persons, unmind 

 ful of the large area drained by each system of laterals, 

 err in using mains but little larger in the bore than the 

 latter. If any are willing to look into the results of the 

 drainage on our Central Park, the most stupendous work of 

 the kind in this country, and one of the best conducted, 

 they will find that the one and a-half-inch and two-inch 

 tiles there used for laterals do not run full even after the 

 most violent and protracted rains, and yet from a single 

 system of twelve acres, the discharge, after a recent rain, 

 ^vas at the rate of 3,000 gallons per hour. This error of 

 using too large tile Mr. Johnston fell into, and now that he 

 has learned better, after a twenty years experience, he 

 cautions his brother farmers against using larger than two- 

 inch tile for laterals. For mains, each farmer must provide 

 as the quantity of water to be conducted is greater or less. 

 In many cases Mr. Johnston has used two rows of four-inch, 

 in others six-inch, and in one, semi-circles of eleven inches, 



