76 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



the work and its results. I found the situation a slope on the east- 

 ern face of a ridge, ascending, I judge, four feet in the first hun- 

 dred. Along this slope trenches were cut, on a horizontal line 

 or course, deviating from a straight line when necessary to suit the 

 inequalities of surface, the bottom of the trench having a horizon- 

 tal run along the face of the slope. The first trench, the pattern 

 after which all other trenches are constructed, is four feet deep 

 and two feet wide, filled with stones to within fifteen inches of the 

 surface, then covered with flat stones and refuse stuff, grass, 

 weeds, anything to serve as a sort of filter holding the soil placed 

 above to the natural line of the surface, leaving water to drop into 

 the trench and be held for the uses designed. The filling, I was 

 informed, was first by round or shapeless stones gathered from the 

 field, leaving interstices that serve in their aggregate as a recepta- 

 cle for whatever water may find entrance, principally from rains 

 and melting snows and any springs that may be tapped. It will 

 be seen that the stone filling serves, as the principal purpose, to 

 support the superincumbent earth and the flat stones placed on 

 the top as a kind of cover to prevent the loose soil from dropping 

 into the receptacle below. The horizontal ditches are constructed 

 at suitable distances along the slope, the series intended to hold 

 the surplus of rains so that none flows over the surface. Between 

 these horizontal trenches there are sub-trenches, leading from one 

 of the main excavations to another. These cross-ditches have less 

 depth but otherwise are constructed in the same manner as the 

 main trenches, their purpose to convey surplus of water from an 

 upper to a lower trench, and so equalize the supply. They are 

 filled in the same manner and covered with fifteen inches of earth. 

 The soil is what I may call clay-loam, with stones intermixed, but 

 no appearance of sand, the close, compact subsoil not easily pene- 

 trated. I refer to condition before treatment, and of this I had 



