92 YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 



merged in water continually. Into brush-drains soil very easily 

 falls, and soan here and there the superincumbent mass caves 

 in, sometimes to such an extent that a wagon-load of dirt is 

 required to fill the sinks ; mice and moles work into them, too, 

 and at best they are poor concerns. The mole-plowing now 

 practised on Western prairies is, for a new country where land 

 is so cheap, and where a sticky clay sub-soil underlies whole 

 districts, a tolerably good plan. It lias been known and prac 

 tised in England since almost the time of Methuseleh. Major 

 Dickinson of Steuben county, New York, has gotten up one 

 of these ancient mole-plows, and dubbed it " the Shanghae." 

 Drains are made in some " wooden countries," by laying two 

 stout poles at bottom and one on them. In Scotland they have 

 in some benighted sections a "shoulder" drain, which consists 

 in digging down, say 18 inches wide, to a certain depth, and 

 then cutting the rest of the way down only one-third as wide ; 

 thus making a narrow box drain in the ground on the shoulders 

 of which inverted stiff sods are laid as a covering, and the soil 

 filled up to the surface upon them. Stone drains he esteems 

 next in utility to tiles, but there is great choice in their con 

 struction. The best way of all is to set up one course of slab 

 stones perpendicularly against the right bank, and then leaning 

 other stones against them, making a drain siiapod like a single- 

 pitch shed-roof. If the stones are delivered to a farmer at the 

 edge of his ditches, they are still dearer for his use than tile 

 drains, even when he has to pay $10 or $12 per 1,000 for tile. 

 The mere cost of excavating and hauling bowlders for drains is 

 very large, and after all, their function is unsatisfactory. The 

 reason why all these kinds of drains have been stoutly upheld 

 by their users is, that any drain, however poor, is far better 

 than none ; crops are increased, tillage facilitated, and the 

 pleased experimenter, perhaps not willing to look for a better 

 method than the one he has employed, thinks there is nothing 

 in the world so good. Tile drains, then, we are told, are the 

 best. Of the several kinds of tile, the pipe kind is to be pre- 



