THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 295 



water and the inclination of the ground where a drain is thought 

 to be needed. The young farmer should never be satisfied with 

 a drain that is not thirty inches deep ; and the instances are very 

 rare where it would not be better to cut it thirty inches than less 

 than that depth. In some places it may be allowable, and drain 

 the soil well, to put small tile in a ditch only two feet deep. 

 But for large tile, and particularly for stone, a ditch should never 

 be less than thirty inches deep. Drains that are thirty inches 

 deep will be just as effectual in drying some fields as if they were 

 three or four feet deep. On the contrary, drains only thirty inches 

 deep in some fields would not be half as effectual in draining the 

 land as they would if they were forty or fifty inches in depth. In 

 some places it will be necessary to sink the ditches four feet deep 

 in order to "get the water," or to reach the veins. But when 

 the water veins are reached at the depth of thirty inches, it will 

 be incurring a bill of useless expense to sink the ditches deeper 

 than that depth. It is no detriment nor disadvantage to land to 

 have the drains four feet deep ; because water will percolate into 

 a deep drain about as soon as it will into a shallow drain twenty- 

 five or thirty inches in depth. When land is drained to cut 

 off the water arising from springs, as a general rule the drains 

 need to be deeper than they do where the surplus water does not 

 arise from springs. 



407. When a drain is to receive a single row of tile, if the 

 ditch is cut barely wide enough to admit them it will be just as 

 well as if it were a foot wide. When the ditches are to be cut 

 three or four feet deep, they must necessarily be wide enough for 

 a man to work in without being cramped for want of space. The 

 narrower a ditch is, of course the less earth there will be to dig 

 up and shovel out. When a ditch is to receive tile not more than 

 five inches wide, and is to be dug not more than three feet deep, 

 it may be about ten inches wide at the top and five inches wide 

 at the bottom. A man cannot work conveniently in a ditch 

 smaller than this size. When a ditch is to be filled with stone, 

 calculations should first be made how large will be the stream of 

 water, and how much space the stone will occupy. A stoned 

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