DEPTH OF DRAINS. 215 



a rain-fall of three or four inches in twenty-four hours. You 

 have four feet of dry soil. The rain goes all through that soil, 

 and it will hold it, without leaving any on top. Now suppose 

 your drain is just two feet deep ; you get three or four inches of 

 rain-fall ; the water is within two feet of the bottom of your 

 tiles, and when the rain begins, it fills you right up at once, and 

 floods your potatoes or corn which you have just planted. It will 

 stand two or three days, and your seed is all rotted ; whereas, 

 if you had gone two feet deeper, the soil would have been dry 

 enough to have held all this rain-fall, and you would have saved 

 your seed. In this regard, it is very important to get your 

 drains deep. And then, they are out of the way of the subsoil 

 plough, out of the way, substantially of the working of moles 

 and mice, and out of the way of roots. And that is a point of 

 very great importance. You will find practically (and there 

 are some gentlemen here who know about it,) that drains are 

 very often obstructed by roots ; even tile drains, laid just as 

 close as you can get them, and four feet deep. I have seen the 

 roots of the trees in an apple orchard running to any extent 

 inside a drain — little fibrous roots, that go like the air, any- 

 where. Even mangold wurzel roots have been known to go 

 into tiles laid four feet deep. They get in through the cracks, 

 and if you put your tiles in only two feet deep, you would be 

 very likely to get your drain stopped up by roots. 



Mr. Keyes. What is the lateral effect by increasing the depth 

 of a drain ? 



Mr. French. It increases the effect laterally. Water always 

 seeks the lowest point. Gravity carries it down. You dig a 

 hole in the ground, and all the water in the neighborhood tends 

 down to it. It goes to the lowest place. You dig a two-foot 

 drain, and a four-foot drain beside it, and the water all goes 

 into the four-foot drain. The four-foot drain runs the soonest, 

 and the two-foot drain will carry no water unless the foflr-foot 

 drain is full. The deeper a drain is, the further it will drain, 

 because the slope is moderate throughout the bottom of it. Of 

 course you may get a drain so deep that it will not drain the 

 surface at all. I think the English authority is satisfactory 

 upon the point that four-feet drains, even in that climate, 

 where they have less rain than here, are attended with the best 

 results ; although I will state here — which I have had occasion 



