92 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



dition, all of the moisture that it contains would move, by capillary 

 attraction, from particle to particle, to supply the evaporation at 

 the surface, vi^hile the crust thus formed on the surface would 

 prevent the free admission of air, even if the lower soil were 

 loose and porous. 



It is the same in the field. A heavy clay soil, saturated with 

 water, dries up to a condition that will not admit of the circula- 

 tion of air. Even if the thin surface-soil, containing much vege- 

 table matter, is loose enough, it is soon heated to such a depth 

 that the little moisture it receives during the cooler parts of the 

 day is dried out by the midday sun, while the compact subsoil is 

 impervious to all atmospheric influence. Plants grow well 

 enough during the weeks that separate the rains of early spring 

 from the heat of midsummer ; but when the drought sets in — the 

 roots being only in the surface-soil — for roots will not enter a 

 cold, saturated subsoil — vigorous vegetation ceases, and we accuse 

 Providence of having sent us a scourge for our sins. As well 

 blame Providence for our loss if we neglected to plow and har- 

 row and plant at seed-time, as for loss from neglect to drain away 

 the water that places us at the mercy of the drought. 



If we underdrain the land, even without the use of the sub- 

 soil plow, — but rather with it,— the early growth will be less pre- 

 carious and more uniform, and the roots of our crops will push 

 down into the subsoil, where they will find, all through the dryest 

 summer, enough moisture for their uses. For the first year or 

 two, of course, we could only hope to modify our evils, but in 

 time we should find, as the writer has found in his own practice, 

 that if we keep the surface of our underdrained ground well stirred, 

 a six weeks' drought, that lays the whole country side bare, has 

 little power to diminish our crops. 



KINDS OF SOIL WHICH ARE BENEFITED BY TILE-DRAINING. 



All soils which are so retentive that the water of rains is not 

 (at least during the season of growth,) absorbed as it falls, and 

 carried readily down to a point below the ordinary reach of the 

 roots of crops — say to a depth of at least three feet — will be 



