20 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



Have I described enough? or shall I add, to this 

 subsoil sketch, a faint and feeble idea of the surface, 

 some time about the month of February, (surnamed 

 "fill-dyke" not without reason,) and endeavor to 

 paint the hopeless, currentless, resourceless, and 

 pitiable condition of water, whose unhappy fate 

 has fallen, or melted, upon fields as flat as a 

 billiard table, and without even a "pocket" to 

 run into for escape or concealment? There it 

 would stand, day after day, and week after week, 

 and month after month, shining along the serpen- 

 tine furrows, as if it never, never, never would go 

 again ! And the only wonder was when or how, or 

 by what bold amphibious being the ridges had 

 ever been raised, which it intersected, like a sample 

 series of Dutch canals and embankments. 



geologically good, although lying incongruously beneath the 

 surface, the unpromising aspect of the newly-turned earth 

 Bhould be no obstacle to his perseverance. Some of the most 

 productive farms within our knowledge have been reclaimed 

 from lands, time out of mind, considered, even by good 

 cultivators, worthless, and eventually brought into cultiva- 

 tion through the aid of a scientific analysis determining 

 their composition, and the application of improved methods 

 of draining, to throw them into proper condition for the 

 plow. ED. 



