THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 297 



ditch, and most of that bubbles up in the bottom, there is certain 

 evidence that it should be sunk from six to twelve, or perhaps 

 twenty inches deeper. When the soil is too wet to plow, a ditch 

 thirty inches deep will often send out a stream of water sufficiently 

 large to fill tile having an inch and a half calibre. But when 

 that soil is dry enough to plow, and such a stream of water can 

 be obtained in a ditch of twenty rods in length, it will drain the 

 ground for a rod or more on each side of it. But when there is 

 an abundance of springs, in some localities there will be four 

 times as much water collected in a given distance as there would 

 be in some others. But it is utterly impossible to give perfect 

 directions for draining every place or field, without having a man 

 of some experience on the ground to examine the ditches, either 

 after they are dug or while the digging is going on. An engineer 

 may give directions for draining a field, with the assurance that 

 if the ditches are sunk three and a half or four feet deep it will 

 be thoroughly drained ; when, at the same time, if he were on the 

 ground when the digging of the ditches was in progress, he would 

 decide, without hesitancy, that it would be useless to dig the 

 ditches over thirty or thirty-five inches deep, to collect about all 

 the water that would be collected were they sunk twelve or 

 twenty inches deeper. I would by no means advocate the prac 

 tice of attempting to drain land with drains less than thirty inches 

 deep, even where a drain two feet deep would collect just as 

 much water as a deeper one. But when drains thirty inches 

 deep will subserve as good purpose as deeper ones, there can be 

 no plausible reason assigned why they should be sunk deeper. 

 At the depth of thirty inches frost will never affect them, nor the 

 subsoil plow derange any portion of them so as to obstruct the 

 water passages. I refer more particularly to small drains, where 

 there is but little water. 



MANNER OF FILLING DRAINS. 



409. The sooner drains are filled after they have been finished, 

 the better ; and, in some instances, it will be very necessary to 

 make the passage for the water as soon as practicable after the 



