90 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



UNDERDRAINING versus DROUGHT. 



That land should be made damper by being made more dry, 

 that underdraining should be one of t^e best preventives of the 

 ill effects of drought — this is the apparently anomalous proposi- 

 tion on which one of the strongest arguments in favor of draining 

 is based. 



When we see a field baked to the consistence of a brick, gap- 

 ing open in wide cracks, and covered with a stunted growth of 

 parched and thirsty plants, it seems hard to believe that the simple 

 laying of hollow tiles four feet deep in the dried-up mass would 

 do any thing at all toward the improvement of its condition. For 

 the present season it would not ; but for the next it would, and 

 for every season thereafter, and in increasing degree, so long as 

 the tiles continued to act as effective drainage. 



The baking and the cracking, and the unfertile condition of 

 the soil are the result of a previous condition of entire saturation. 

 Clay cannot be moulded into bricks, nor can it be dried into 

 lumps, unless it is made soaking wet. Dry or only damp clay, 

 once made fine, can never again be made lumpy unless it is first 

 made thoroughly wet, and is pressed together while in its wet 

 condition. Neither can a considerable heap of pulverize'd clay, 

 kept covered from the rain, but exposed to sun and air, ever be- 

 come even apparently dry except within an inch or two of its 

 surface. 



Underdraining, if the work is properly done of course, after it 

 has had time to bring the soil for a depth of two or three feet to 

 a thoroughly well-drained condition, will equally prevent it from 

 becoming baked into lumps, or from being, for any considerable 

 depth below the surface, too dry for the purposes of vegetation. 

 In the first pjace, the water of heavy spring rains, instead of ly- 

 ing soaking in the soil until the rapid drying of summer bakes it 

 into coherent clods, settles away and leaves the clay, within a 

 few hours after the rain-fall ceases and before rapid evaporation 

 commences, too much dried to crack into masses. 



Of course, this is only the beginning of the operations of :m- 



