THE NEW AGRICULTURE. \ 133 



the Doctor goes, he makes no mistake, but stops short at the very 

 spot where he should have gone ahead. Pointing to Europe, he 

 says : 



" Holland, for instance, is one of the most prosperous countries 

 in the world, a land where banks never fail, where pauperism is 

 unknown, and bankruptcy unheard of. It is held against the 

 hourly protest of the sea. The houses rest upon piles driven into 

 the soft earth, yet its drainage is so perfect, that its productive- 

 ness is wonderful. The dykes cost more than sixty millions of 

 dollars. It is the best example of plucky farming on the planet." 



To cover the case the Doctor should have added that, Hollanders 

 have found out the way and put it in practice, how to drain and 

 irrigate, irrigate and drain, not starving by fits and stuffing by 

 starts, but feeding and watering the vegetable kingdom, always 

 abundantly and never in surfeit, never attempting to grow crops 

 in the way some people do pigs, with a streak of fat and a streak 

 of lean, but so arranging their dykes and ditches as to keep the 

 waters always moving through their soils. 



Let us suggest that should the State of New York continue in 

 its determination not to extend aid to undertakings such as re- 

 claiming the swamp lauds of the Conewango Valley, and a stock 

 company will organize and purchase the entire forty thousand 

 acres and do precisely what Doctor Edwards proposes, not stop- 

 ping there, but sinking trenches and cross drains for overflow in a 

 way to do what the Hollanders have done, and though it were to 

 become necessary to manufacture tile, conforming them to the 

 work in hand, thirty dollars an acre at least can he made, or in the 

 aggregate, one million, two hundred thousand dollars. 



The Doctor tells us that three kinds of land are found in the 

 swamps, one composed of deep muck, another of fine silt reaching 

 an unknown depth, and a third composed of a mixture of the two. 



