114 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDET. 



the pipes." After the ramming is completed, the rest of the ditch 

 may be filled, and it is recommended that the surface soil, which 

 was thrown to one side, be mixed with the subsoil throughout the 

 entire depth. 



Full and complete directions for the laying out and making of 

 tile drains, such as would suffice for any farmer contemplating 

 the improvement' may be found in books on the subject, whose 

 cost is trifling as compared with the cost of the work, and no one 

 should undertake it without first learning all that is to be learned 

 from books on the subject. 



Underdraining should be commenced in the winter time, and 

 very early in the winter. When the ground is locked fast with 

 frost, and when it is impossible to do any out of door work, the 

 farmer has leisure for such a careful study and consideration of 

 the question as is necessary to any successful draining operation ; 

 not that the ditches may not be as well dug, and the tiles as well 

 laid without the least previous consideration, but because the 

 work is very expensive, and any slight mistake made in the ar- 

 rangement of the drains, may result in its being done incom- 

 pletely, or in its being too costly, 



I have, during the past year, drained the whole of Ogden 

 Farm, and, of course, have endeavored to do the work as thor- 

 oughly and as cheaply as was possible. The land drained (that 

 which constitutes the farm proper is sixty acres) lies over the 

 crown of a hill, and all but five or six acres of it has sufficient 

 slope for easy drainage, without their being a very great fall in 

 any part of it. The difference of elevation between the highest 

 and the lowest point is about fifty feet ; and these points lie about 

 a half a mile distant from each other; While the slope of the 

 land appears to the eye to be absolutely uniform, the taking of 

 accurate levels demonstrated that there were considerable inequali- 

 ties, and that drains, laid according to the very best judgment, 

 founded on the apparent slope, would not have stood in proper 

 relation to the true slope. 



The course pursued was the following : The whole farm was 

 staked off into squares of one hundred and sixty feet each, and 



