314: THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 



a man can pick up and haul stone sufficient for ten rods of drain, 

 and lay them, in a day. Where there is an abundance of good 

 stone, he will accomplish more than that. Almost any intelligent 

 school-boy will be able to determine how many feet of plank it will 

 require to fill a rod in length of a drain having a water-passage of a 

 given size. When there is a large stream of water, the side-pieces 

 might be three or four inches wide, and the covering plank twelve or 

 fourteen inches long. (See Fig. 139.) Suppose, for example, that it 

 costs fifty dollars to fill seventy rods of drain with tile having five- 

 inch calibre, making no account of the expense of hauling them. If 

 they are thoroughly burnt, a drain made with them would remain 

 good during all time. Now, then, if a channel is cut in the bot 

 tom of the ditch three inches deep, two inches wide on the bottom 

 and four inches wide at the top, with side-pieces two inches high 

 and an inch and a half thick, covered with plank eight inches 

 long, a calibre or throat would be formed which would b^ equal 

 in size to the calibre of a tile, the superficial measure of which 

 is equal to twenty-two square inches. A throat of the size 

 just mentioned would carry a larger stream of water than tile 

 having five-inch calibre ; and it would require for seventy 

 rods about two thousand one hundred feet of lumber, which 

 would cost in many localities fifteen dollars per one thousand 

 feet ; but in many other places, lumber of equal value would not 

 cost over five dollars per one thousand feet. Now, allowing that 

 a plank drain would last only fifteen years before it would need 

 to be newly planked ; and allowing that it would cost twenty 

 cents per rod to re-dig the ditch every fifteen years, which would 

 use up $14.00 ; and reckoning the interest on the money, being 

 the difference between the first cost of tile and the first cost of 

 plank, we find that it will not cost half as much, in dollars and 

 cents, where large tile is used, to keep drains in order one hun 

 dred years, filling with plank every fifteen years, as it will to use 

 large tile. But who would like an arrangement in which all the 

 leading drains of a farm must be re-dug and re planked every 

 twelve, or fifteen, or even twenty years ? It is better to use plank 

 than not to have drains, where tile nor stone are not at hand. 



