204 THE KEW AGRICULTURE. 



through his 'retorts/ as he calls his trenches, and it is per- 

 fectly filtered, He has this season experimented on water drawn 

 from the main of the "Wellsville waterworks, and that too in the 

 midst of a drought so severe as to dry up the springs feeding the 

 reservoir, causing the water remaining in it to stagnate, rendering 

 it unfit for use. He has purified this water completely. 



" What Mr. Cole does by way of purifying the water falling 

 from the clouds, I can perhaps best illustrate by the fact that a 

 year ago last fall, (the autumn before my employment by him), he 

 corded up for composting, thirty or forty wagon loads of manure 

 in a winrow about twelve rods long near the summit of his hill- 

 side. After I commenced work for him in the spring of last year, 

 when it rained the water would issue from this winrow of the 

 color of lye and running into the first trench below, this liquid 

 manure water would become perfectly filtered, and flow out as 

 pure as the purest spring water. This convinced me that a single 

 trench sunk below a barnyard would save the manure otherwise 

 lost by the wash of rains and melting snows ; and that trenching 

 below stables, sties, hen-houses, and above, below, round and 

 about dwellings and outhouses, and dropping the waters deep 

 down, by overflow from trench to trench and by movement through 

 the surface soil, and percolation through the subsoil, the ground 

 would absorb all impurities. I have become satisfied that the 

 stagnant waters of swamps and ponds, and those from drains and 

 sewers can be dropped into trenches and filtered perfectly and 

 made as pure as the purest spring water. This demonstrates the 

 fact that by the use of Mr. Cole's system an end would come to 

 pear blight, rot in potatoes, of tomatoes, and of rot and premature 

 decay of all kinds. This very season he has been digging Early 

 Hose potatoes of a size and beauty never equalled in the experi- 

 ence of any one who has seen them; the vines continued growing 



