Tile Draining. 77 



catches it and returns it, not all to the farm it came from, but 

 equally on the just and the unjust. It is wise to save this by 

 straining the water through the soil, by taking it out through the 

 underground tiles, instead of letting it go off largely in surface 

 drainage. This is one serious objection to drainage by plowing 

 in narrow lands. I saw a great many wheat fields last winter 

 drained in this way. It is better than no drainage, but it is only 

 a makeshift, not a perfect way. The field that is reasonably level 

 and well tile-drained has its surplus water taken away after a 

 shower, and then there are two or three feet of partly dried soil to 

 catch the next rain and save the fertility in the water. If it rains 

 very hard, of course, some may run off over the surface, but the 

 drainage will help greatly in this line, as will, also, level culture 

 and keeping some crop growing on the land, instead of leaving it 

 bare during winter. Of these points I will write more under their 

 proper head. 



Tile drainage prevents much of the injury that arises from 

 the freezing and thawing of a very wet surface. You all know 

 how in this way clover and wheat roots are little by little lifted 

 up until in the spring they sometimes lie on the surface almost 

 entirely. The sudden freezing on the surface, with the ice at- 

 tached to the root, necessarily lifts it a trifle as the frozen surface 

 lifts, and does it with a power that will break it if it does not 

 come, a power that can rend rocks. Then when it thaws the next 

 day, perhaps, the soil settles back ready to take a new hold, but 

 the root does not. All of this injury cannot be prevented by tile 

 draining, but most of it can be. Tiling does not make a man en- 

 tirely independent. It makes him powerful where before he was 

 impotent, but it does not make him all-powerful. For example, 

 I once had a field of wheat that went into the winter in splendid 

 shape. The land was well drained. Along through the middle 

 of the field was a swale that was most thoroughly drained, as well 

 as man could do it. In the winter there came a sudden thaw, 

 and the snow melted into slush and gradually- worked down into 

 this wide swale. The earth beneath was frozen so no water came 

 out of tile drains. Just at this point there came one of those sud- 

 den changes of temperature Northern Ohio is so. noted for, and 

 quickly that slush was changed into ice. It was rough, but ice 

 that one could skate on, from end to end of the lowland. It 

 staid long, and smothered much of my best wheat, right over tile 

 drains. Instead of thirty-five to thirty-eight bushels, as this field 

 had produced before and has since, we got an average of but 

 twenty-eight, although where there was wheat it was as good as 

 ever. Would you know some of the trials that one who tries to 

 push what his experience teaches him is best has to bear ? One 

 man was so unkind as to lay this diminished yield to soil ex- 

 haustion from our method of farming. I have had to take the 

 same when frost or blight struck us, without any regard to facts or 



