12G HANDT-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



the work is done. I have seen pictures and diagrams show- 

 ing every step of the operation, and have had letters from 

 England (in reply to my questions) telling me precisely what they 

 do there. I have tried for fifteen years — with scores of Irish 

 ditchers — to imitate them, and have finally concluded that the 

 statements made were not true, and that the pictures drawn were 

 drawn from the imagination. I could in no way get my ditches 

 dug without having the men tramping on the bottom, and making 

 more or less mud according to the amount of water, — and this 

 mud, running toward the main, carried a sure source of obstruc- 

 tion with it. Hence, I have always recommended that the whole 

 line be opened from one end to the other, before a tile is laid, and 

 that the tile-laying be commenced at the upper ends of the laterals 

 and continued down stream^ so that no muddy water would run 

 into them, as would be the case if the tiles were laid from the 

 lower end upward. 



I am still convinced that in very wet, soft land, or where the 

 grade is so slight that great care is necessary to preserve the 

 uniformity of the fall, this precaution is necessary. But wherever 

 there is a fall of as much as one foot in a hundred feet, if the 

 bottom is ordinarily firm, the best plan will he to reverse the direction^ 

 and to commence laying at the lower end of the drain — putting in 

 the tile, and covering it up, as fast as the digging progresses. 



I am led to this change of opinion by seeing the thing done by 

 drainers of English education. What I could not understand from 

 description, nor attain by experiment, is made clear by observation. 

 In the digging of ordinary drains the foot of the workman never reaches 

 to within less than a foot of the bottom of the ditch ; consequently, 

 there is no trampling of the floor of the drain, and no formation 

 of mud. What water may ooze out from the land (and, as but 

 little of the ditch is open at once, the amount is very small) has no 

 silt in it, and cannot obstiruct the tile through which it runs. 



I will try to describe the process so that all may understand it. 

 We will suppose the main drain to be laid and filled in, junction 

 pieces being placed where the laterals are to come in, and that we 

 are about to dig and lay a lateral emptying into it. 



