NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



before, that the amount of meadow land over- 

 flo';ved by the dams of manufacturing companies 

 would raise wood enough ten times over to carry 

 those mills by steam. He advised the proprie- 

 tors of these meadow lands to ask the Legisla- 

 ture to give them a law, if they had none ade- 

 quate, under which this dam may be lowered, or, 

 if necessary, entirely removed, and a compensa- 

 tion made to the proprietors of the dam. He 

 had no doubt that the Massachusetts General 

 Court would give such a law, when the circum- 

 stances were known. Massachusetts had, in 1855, 

 passed the best drainage law in the world ; by 

 which a man was given power to drain through 

 any adjacent lands. He believed this was, in 

 spirit, fully up to such an act as was wanted. 

 In England, where a large territory had been 

 overflowed, the evil had been removed by an act 

 of Parliament, by which the proprietors had been 

 compensated in a degree sufficient to support a 

 steam power equal to the water power taken 

 from them, and the streams were allowed to go 

 free as God had intended they should. 



Mr. Abel Gleason, of Wayland, made some 

 remarks, mostly corroborative of the other speak- 

 ers. He spoke of the inconvenience and dam- 

 age from the waters sent down from the Cochit- 

 uate reservoirs above, during the haying season. 



Col. Heard said he knew that the Avhole fall of 

 the river from Wayland to Billerica, twenty-two 

 miles, was only two feet ; but he believed, in 

 common with several other speakers, that the 

 water in the river at tkis point was several feet 

 higher than it was at the dam in Billerica. 



Deacon Heard, from Wayland, made some re- 

 marks upon the effects of the dam. 



Judge French, being requested, explained that, 

 by the law that made water run down hill, the sur- 

 face of the water must be somewhat descending ; 

 and that it was very natural that the water should 

 be piled up higher twenty miles back than at the 

 dam. 



The resolutions were then passed without any 

 opposition. 



Mr. Samuel H. Rhoades moved that the offi- 

 cers of this meeting, and such persons as the 

 meeting might add, be appointed an Executive 

 Committee to strengthen, perfect and continue 

 this organization, and to raise such funds as may 

 be necessary to secure its objects. The commit- 

 tee was raised as follows : 



Simon Brown, of Concord, President ; Col. 

 David Heard, of AVayland, Elijah Wood, Jr., of 

 Concord, John Eaton, of Sudbury, Jonas Smith, 

 of Lincoln, Jonathan Hill, of Billerica, Nathan 

 O. Reed, of Bedford, Thomas Page, of Carlisle, 

 Charles Fisk, of Framingham, Vice Presidents; 

 R. F. Fuller, of Wayland, Dr. Joseph Reynolds, 

 of Concord, Secretaries, and Samuel IL Rhoades, 

 of Concord, Treasurer. To whom were added 

 Nathan Barker, of Weston, and Thomas J. Da- 

 mon, of Wayland. 



After some further remarks, in which no new 

 facts were elicited, the meeting dissolved. 



It was estimated by several of the speakers 

 that the amount of property damaged — much of 

 it rendered valueless — was as much as a million 

 dollars. — Boston Journal. 



The Comparative Distance of the Near- 

 est Fixed Star. — A correspondent of one of 



the London papers says — As the comet is part- 

 ing company with us, I think the following state- 

 ment will afford the public whose minds are not 

 familiar with astronomical distances, a pretty 

 good idea thereof. If the earth's distance from 

 the sun, 95 millions of miles, is represented by a 

 space of 1 inch ; Jupiter's, 490 millions of miles, 

 by 5 inches ; Saturn's, 706 millions of miles, by 

 9 inches ; Uranus's, 1800 millions of miles, by 

 81 inches; and Neptune's, 2900 million of miles 

 by 29 inches ; the diameter of the longest ellipse 

 of the orbit of Donati's comet, whose period is 

 said to be 2495 years, and distant 35,100 millions 

 of miles, will be represented by a space of 368 

 inches. Then the distance of the nearest fixed 

 star, which is at least 35 billions of miles distant, 

 will be represented by a space of 348,000 inches, 

 or 5 7-9th miles ; which is 1000 times that of the 

 comet when farthest off, or 12,689 times the dis- 

 tance of the planet Neptune from the sun, the 

 most distant yet discovered belonging to the so- 

 lar system, and which occupies 164^ years in its 

 orbit. 



For the Neta England Farmer. 

 GBADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF LAND. 



Mr. Editor : — In a recent number of the 

 Farmer there is an article upon thorough drain- 

 ing, in which the writer says that the thorough 

 draining of our old farms in New England is 

 simply an impossibility. I do not write because 

 I think I have done more than hundreds of others 

 who are too modest to tell what they have done, 

 but for the encouragement of young men of 

 small means and poor prospects, to stay on the 

 old farm. I think it is the duty of all of us who 

 have remained with our parents, and have ob- 

 tained sufficient property to support us in our 

 old age, to give our experience to the public. 



I will give you some of mine, which you may 

 lay before your readers, if you think proper, f 

 was the youngest of seven boys ; the others all 

 vrent off as soon as they were large enough. I 

 felt it to be a duty which I owed to my parents 

 to stay upon the farm, which was poor and had 

 but little income. I made up my mind to make it 

 better, if labor, patience and perseverance would 

 accomplish it. There was a swamp upon the 

 farm containing about seven acres, covered with 

 bushes and brambles, except about one acre, 

 which Vr-as too wet to bear them. My first labor 

 was to dig a ditch through the centre, and then 

 I began to cut bushes and plow a small piece at 

 a time as fast as I could attend to it, and lay it 

 into beds about two rods wide, to take off the 

 surface water. I followed this process until it 

 was all plowed. I found it necessary to plow as 

 often as once in four or five years, to keep out the 

 swamp grasses. I also found it very difficult to 

 keep the beds in their right form and the drains 

 clear. I knew nothing about underdraining, but 

 thought I would try the experiment of using up 

 the small stones that plowed out of the other 

 fields, and found them to improve the land so 

 much, I made use of all my small stones, and then 

 commenced draining with slabs, which I expect 

 will fail in a few years. 



I did not know that drain tile was manufac- 

 tered so near me until I saw the advertisement 

 in your paper. I purchased a few of them thi!? 



