130 HANDY -BOOK OF IIUSBAXDRY. 



are not needed in making fences,) it is often desirable to make 

 drains with other materials. 



STONE DRAINS. 



Stone drains, when well built, may last a very long time, but 

 they are not so reliable as tile drains, for the reason that they 

 cannot be so made as to keep the water flowing through them in 

 a smooth current, nor so as to entirely prevent it from flowing 

 over the earth, which it may wash up and deposit where it will 

 obstruct the channel. They are, also, more liable to be reached 

 by water from the surface, running down through fissures in the 

 soil — such water being the best possible destroyer of any drain, 

 stone or tile, on account of the earth it carries with it. 



Contrary to the general idea, stone drains are usually much more 

 costly than tile drains ; they require a much wider trench to be 

 dug, and refilled, and it frequently costs more than the price of 

 the tiles to lay the stones properly, after they have been deposited 

 at the side of the trench. 



Every farmer in a stony region knows how to lay a stone 

 drain, with an "eye," "throat," or "trunk," as the channel for 

 the water is called, but there are two important principles con- 

 nected with such drains, which are usually not known, or are 

 disregarded. 



1. A stone drain should never form a part of a system of which 

 the other part is laid with tiles ; because if the stone drain 

 empties into the tile drain it will be very likely to deliver to it 

 so much sand or gravel "silt" as to obstruct it, while if a stone 

 drain is used as an outlet for tile drains, it will greatly lessen 

 their permanent value by its own liability to become closed. 



2. No porous material — neither small stones, straw, sods, brush, 

 nor shavings — should be placed on the top of the stones forming 

 the channel. It is not from above that any drain should receive 

 its water. The water that is drained away from a saturated soil 

 always rises into the drain from below. The amount flowing in 

 from the sides is hardly worth notice, and any that might come 



