DEPTH OF DRAIN. 737 



almost a useless expense to get an engineer ; he can tell you 

 how deep to cut through the ridge to give the water an outlet 

 for a certain depth above, but this will not help any about 

 grading the bottom of the ditch, and if you get the drain 

 deeper above than it is below, just that much it will fill up. 

 You must know that a drain can be very easily ruined by not 

 being graded correctly. 



There can be no question in regard to the best form of 

 tile. At first, the horseshoe tile was made semi-circular in 

 shape, and without a bottom. Next, the sole tile, of the same 

 shape as the horseshoe, but having a flat bottom. Then the 

 pipe tile, which is circular, and has many advantages, among 

 them the possibility of being laid true on the bottom, however 

 it may be warped or crooked in burning. Horseshoe tile 

 should never be used, as they will be filled with crawfish and 

 become useless. Tile are usually made twelve and a half 

 inches long, or intended to be, but they are seldom over twelve 

 inches. I have used a great many of this length, and found, 

 on taking them up, that in several places where a stone was 

 removed in the bottom of the drain, that one end of the tile 

 had sunken and the other end raised up, which would leave 

 quite an aperture for dirt to wash in. I found a remedy for 

 this by getting a longer cut-off, and making my tile fifteen 

 inches long, which I find are superior to the short ones in sev- 

 eral respects. 



DEPTH OF DRAINS. 



I have often been asked why I drain so deep. 1 do so to 

 get the full benefit of my land. After cultivating wheat I dug 

 down to the tile drain six feet deep and found plenty of wheat 

 roots at that depth. Beach land, which is a hard pan that the 

 roots of none of our crops can enter, after being drained and 

 frozen, becomes loose and mellow to nearly the depth of the 

 drain, and twice the amount of grain can be raised on the 

 same land. I found a few swamps com[)osed of vegetable 

 mold that became so light, loose, and chaffy after draining that 

 it would not produce, but after plowing these swamps twenty 



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