ABOUT FKFITS, FLOWERS AND FAEMING. 163 



We know pieces of wet, peaty meadow land lying close 

 by the farm-house, the only drawback to the beauty of the 

 place. A good farmer would wish to recover such a spot 

 for the same reason that he would prefer a handsome house 

 to a homely one a fine horse over a coarse-looking animal 

 a sightly fence, rather than a clumsy one. There is much 

 strong land but high, flat, and cold which is wet through 

 all the spring, resisting seed till long after other portions of 

 the farm are at work, and which would, but for this back 

 wardness, be regarded as the best land. If without great 

 expense, such land could be cured, few farmers would mind 

 the trouble or labor. 



There are three kinds of draining which may be employed 

 according to circumstances subsoil-plowing, furrow-drain 

 ing and ditch-draining. When a soil is underbound by a 

 compact, impervious subsoil, all the rain or melting snow is 

 retained in the soil until it can exhale and evaporate. For 

 the subsoil acts like a water-tight floor, or the bottom of a 

 tub. Subsoil-plowing, by thoroughly working through this 

 under crust, gives a downward passage to the moisture ; 

 water sinks as it does in sandy loams. Nor will such treat 

 ment be less useful to prevent the injury of summer drought ; 

 for the depth of soil affords a harbor for roots from whence 

 they can draw moisture when the top-soil is dry as ashes. 



But there is a limit put to this treatment by the amount 

 of clay contained in the subsoil. It has been experiment 

 ally ascertained in England^ that when the soil contains 

 as high as forty-three per cent, of alumina (clay) sub 

 soil-plowing is useless, because the clay soon coalesces and 

 is as impervious as ever. In such cases, if the land has a 

 slight inclination in any direction, furrow-draining may, in 

 some measure, relieve it. The ground is marked out in 

 lands as for sowing grain and plowed with back-furrows, 

 throwing the earth toward the centre. The rain and snow 

 will run to either side, and flow off by the channels left 

 between each strip. This treatment does not relieve the 



