288 THE TOTING FARMER'S MANUAL. 



arrangement and disposition of good materials. If a drain is 

 made of good materials, and those materials are properly dis 

 posed of, we may safely calculate that it will work well for ages 

 to come, without any repairing. 



396. The first consideration in draining wet land is, to ascer 

 tain with certainty from whence the water which renders a soil 

 too wet comes. Land is often made too wet for cultivation by 

 the superabundant water coming out of the earth, or by its being 

 retained by a retentive subsoil. Where a very thin super soil 

 lies on a very retentive subsoil, water will often collect in ponds 

 in low places ; and so long a time will be required before it will 

 disappear, that a crop would be about destroyed. In this case, 

 if the young farmer desires to drain only such low, wet places, a 

 good drain may be run directly through them. But if his aim is 

 to drain the entire field in the most thorough manner, drains paral 

 lel to each other, about two rods apart, should be made across 

 the field, up and down the slope, if the surface of the field is in 

 clined, all of them intersecting with one large drain. . Some 

 times the most proper place for the main drain will be across the 

 middle of a field. But it is a minor consideration, where the 

 water is turned, if a drain is properly made, and has a good out 

 let. When a low place is rendered very wet by water arising 

 from springs, a drain entirely around it, between the wet ground 

 and the dry ground, will cut off the source of the water ; and 

 if the bottom of the drain is lower than the lowest place in the 

 pond-hole, it will be well drained ; otherwise, a drain should be 

 cut through the lowest place, and then around the outside of it. 



397. When the surface of a field that lies sloping is too wet 

 in places over the entire field, the most approved manner of 

 draining it is, to cut the ditches up and down the slope, from thirty 

 to forty feet apart. Then, if a spring of water should happen to 

 be near the middle of two drains, which the main drains did not 

 seem to affect, a branch drain should be made, diagonally, above 

 the wet ground, two-thirds of the distance across the space be 

 tween two drains. In cutting off the water from springs, it 

 should always be borne in mind that the most proper place for a 



