MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



tract of about eighty acres. Of this eighty acres 

 about twenty were strong clay land, with a very 

 retentive subsoil, and tlie remaining sixty he 

 remembered from his boyhood as the favorite 

 haunt of snipes and wild ducks, and never saw 

 there any thing else. In the course of the first 

 year the sixty acres maintained, and maintnined 

 very poorly, during the summer, six horses ; and 

 on the twenty acres there was a very small crop 

 of very poor hay. It was impossible for land 

 to be in a poorer condition ; and they would 

 agree with him when he told them that, in 

 breaking it up, they had some two or three 

 times todig the plough horses out of the bog. 

 In a 811 the whole of this land was thoroughly 

 subsoiled and drained, and in 1842, what was 

 not worth 10s. an acre the year before, was in 

 turnips, and on that land they fed off in five 

 months, and fattened for the butcher, 80 beasts 

 and yOO sheep, and aftei-wards carted into the 

 farm-yard 350 tons of turnips. In the present 

 year they had a very fair crop of barley and 



oats, which his friend Mr. Henry would be very 

 glad to show to any gentleman who felt any 

 curiosity on the subject. Now he did not hesi- 

 tate to say that that laud was, at that moment, 

 worth 30s. an acre. The outlay upon it for pul- 

 ling up old fences, thorough draining, tilling and 

 breaking it up, amounted to just £7 10s. per 

 acre, just giving 20s. for every 150s. of outlay, 

 and giving to the landlord a pcmiancnt interest 

 of 14 per cent, on the money laid out on that 

 unpromising ground. It happened that, in the 

 same year, they took into their own hands land 

 which had been abandoned by the tenant as 

 perfectly worthless. It was a large field of 

 twenty-two acres of very poor sandy soil. It 

 was drained at an expense of £2 per statute 

 acre, and in the first year they fed off on that 

 land 120 sheep, the remaining part of the turnips 

 being carted to the farm-yard, and he ventured 

 to say that, at the expense of £'2 per acre, the 

 land as increased in value 10s. per acre to the 

 landlord and IDs. to tlie tenant. 



IRRIGATION. 



HOW CONDUCTED— ITS VALUABLE RESULTS STATED. 



This is one of the two great fertilizing expedi- 

 ents, of which we have already spoken, as now 

 operating wonders for the agriculture of Eng- 

 land ; under-draining, as there practised, being 

 too costly for American Farmers generally, 

 while irrigation is within the means of many, 

 on whose estates springs and streams of larger 

 or smaller volume, invite this use of a great and 

 cheap resource for the increase of their crops, 

 as well of grain as of grass. 



Here we take leave to repeat from a discourse 

 delivered recently before, and at the request of 

 the New-Castle county, Delaware, Agi-icultural 

 Society, a few remarks which we had there the 

 honor to submit, on the value of this operation : 



Irrigation is, in my vie^v, another means of 

 augmenting agricultural products in a degree 

 that farmers seem not to be generally aware of; 

 and there is not a district teacher in the State 

 who might not in a few hours comprehend and 

 instnict his jjupils in the rationale of this im- 

 portant operation. A single chapter in such 

 text books as you ought to have provided for 

 your common schools, with diagrams to illus- 

 trate the process, would render the whole sub- 

 ject at once familiar to the dullest capacity. ' It 

 is apparent to the most superficial observation,' 

 Bays an experienced writer on this topic, ' that 

 the places contiguous to springs, over which 

 their waters continue to flow, are ever covered 

 with a conspicuous verdure of the sweetest 

 grasses ; w hile stagnant water converts the land 

 into mar.fh, productive of nothing but coarse 

 and unpalatable aquatic plants. To imitate this 

 process of nature constitutes the leading prin- 

 ciple of irrigation' In fact, my friends, the 

 object of the physical sciences, at the mere sug- 

 gestion of which, in connexion with their busi- 

 (1P8) 



ness, practical fanners are prone to take alarm, 

 after all, is but to observe and to imitate and 

 regulate the processes of nature. 



How many there are who have small streams 

 passing through their farms, which, if taken at 

 their sources and conducted along the highest 

 line that the water would flow, might be made 

 to iixigate and fructify every acre over which 

 they could be turned ; and he must be slow in 

 the comprehension of his interest, who does not 

 see how profitable, under favorable circum- 

 stances, is all land kept under the .scythe, com- 

 pared with that which demands frequent plow- 

 ing, especially in a country like ours, where the 

 deamess of farm labor stands like a ' lion in the 

 path ' of niral improvement. In the practice of 

 this important and beautiful operation, our 

 country is, especially, much behind others which 

 are much in the rear of us in general intelli- 

 gence, and in that natural shrewdness and 

 readiness to take a hint which is said to charac- 

 terize ' the universal Yankee nation.' 



The writer on irrigation, who laid down the 

 general principle in the words I have quoted, 

 gives many verj- striking instances of the profits 

 resulting from it in England and Scotland, as 

 well as on the Continent ; otherwise, I have 

 heard the niles and results of irrigation no 

 where so well stated as by Mr. Webster, with 

 his usual clearness, on his return from England. 

 Under a strong persuasion that this is a piacti- 

 cable but much neglected resource, within the 

 reach of American farmers, you will bear with 

 me while I rehearse a few of the examples to 

 show the advantages of irrigation given by the 

 writer already mentioned. 



R. K. Campbell, of Kailzie, commenced irri- 

 gating, by forming 5| acres of tlie lower part of 

 his lawn into water meadow. In its natural 

 slate it was worth $10 an acre yearly rent, 

 which .some years since was the yearly rent of 

 i the Delaware meadows, below Philadelphia. 



