THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 27 



depths of our ditch, we ascended the slope and arrested them by 

 making a second ditch, thus aggregating the waters at the rear of 

 the house, and, the winter proving an open one, we secured a foun- 

 tain of pure water during its continuance. The snows in the woods 

 began melting in February, and their waters descending the hill, 

 striking the surface of our trench, disappeared, only to emerge in 

 the stream beyond, and all along through the spring ensuing 

 seemed to render more crystal-clear the waters of the creek The 

 effect upon the soil of our garden seemed miraculous ; for such was 

 its condition as to enable us to plant potatoes the last days of Feb- 

 ruary, doing so in hopes of being able to mature them in season to 

 avoid the rot, at that time threatening extinction of this most valu- 

 able among root crops. 



Not until within the last ten years have we been enabled to see 

 that it was the waters of rains, dews and spring melting snows, 

 descending from among the damps and moulds, mosses, ferns, 

 flags, wild grasses, mucks and minglings of a swamp in the depres- 

 sion of that mountain side above, moving out from under the snows 

 at spring water temperature and dropping into our trench and 

 continuing to flow along the incline of the subsoil not for ten 

 years did we discover that these waters removed the frost from our 

 garden, preparing it for germination of seeds two or three weeks 

 earlier than otherwise. 



We see it all now, having found out there was the best of reasons 

 existing why we, that season, grew as fine potatoes as we had ever 

 seen, the frost having been kept out of the ground during March 

 when the Frost King coming in fiercest fury, laid his hand on 

 the lands of our neighbors, freezing them to a considerable depth, 

 fully three weeks after we had committed our seed to the ground, 

 and making an end of crops on every other spot, within, perhaps, 

 an hundred miles in any direction from our home. Nor was it 



