38 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



crop of barley evaporated nine inches, or 1800 tons of water more 

 than bare land lying alongside. These experiments show the im- 

 portance of underdrawing so as to keep the soil pulverized and mellow, 

 to hold like a sponge the water which falls on it, and give it off to growing 

 plants as they need it. A. good growing crop keeps the soil in better 

 condition than a soil without a crop, the latter being easily flood- 

 ed, and again parched by drought : and without underdraining, 

 either artificial or natural, the soil cannot be brought into a good 

 condition to absorb and hold surplus water." 



And yet, with all of this, we reasoned, the world seems to have 

 gone stark mad in efforts to dry up and carry off the waters, acting 

 on the theory that better crops might be thereby grown. 



Though we had commenced this volume when Mr. Stewart's 

 work came to hand, we laid by the pen, and scanned carefully 

 everything found in Mr. Stewart's pages. It was a cornucopia of 

 good things, the fairest, most frank and undisguised declaration of 

 faith we had ever seen from the pen of any one writing on the sub- 

 jects of irrigation and drainage. We found it invaluable. Having 

 shown that in European countries, more especially in the British 

 Isles, the rainfall is not only in excess of the average in America, 

 but also that there is less of sunshine ; and that the atmosphere 

 being a humid one, evaporation is correspondingly retarded, Mr. 

 Stewart continues : 



" Our intense heats, cause a large portion of the rainfall to be evap- 

 orated directly from the soil, and our copious summer rains are 

 seldom fully retained, but frequently in large part escape into 

 streams and water-courses, and are lost to vegetation. Our fall, 

 winter and early spring rains, come at times when the crops de- 

 rive the least benefit, or none at all, from them. The amount of 

 rainfall that thus escapes paying tribute to our crops is by far the 

 largest portion of it. To estimate it at three-fourths of the whole, 



