TILE DRAINAGE. 61 



often so porous that the drains will " draw" two, three, or 

 even four rods on each side ; that is, the drains can be four, 

 six, or even eight rods apart, -and yet drain the land quite 

 thoroughly. Even without tile drainage, pretty good wheat 

 may be raised on such land by plowing it in high narrow 

 lands with deep dead-furrows kept well open ; but on this 

 plan there is often a good deal of loss of wheat along the 

 dead-furrows. 



Sometimes this kind of land is so level that outlets for 

 tile drains can be obtained only by digging long open ditch- 

 es, paid for by township or county funds raised on the equal- 

 ized-assessment plan. After such outlet-ditches are dug it 

 would seern to be the height of folly for the individual farm- 

 er to fail to get the full benefit of the big ditch he has helped 

 to pay for, get his pay, I say, by systematically "tiling out" 

 at necessary intervals all the land he intends to till. In such 

 regions they speak of "tiling out" the land; they really 

 "tile out" the water, and leave the land fitted for the best 

 agriculture. 



It thus seems clear to me that tillage pays better than ex- 

 clusive grazing and feeding, even if tiling must precede it ; 

 partial tiling, as simply in the depressions of soils otherwise 

 naturally drained ; or thorough tiling by parallel laterals, 

 though at wide intervals, as in the black soils of the prairie 

 regions, or the limestone regions once limbered; or even 

 where the laterals must be not more than two or three rods 

 apart, as on many of the more compact shale- clays of the 

 Western Keserve. As already intimated in substance, the 

 present prices of these latter lands seem to me to make them 

 far cheaper than the lands of the far West, which are often 

 too arid for successful agriculture year after year ; cheaper. 

 too, than the high-priced, fertile, naturally drained lands of 

 Ohio provided only that these clayey lands be tiled eco- 

 nomically and well, and be wisely tilled, fertilized, and 

 cropped thereafter. At all events I should be very slow to 

 sell a farm well located in the intellectual, social, and moral 



