H2 TILE DRAINAGE. 



atmosphere of the Western Reserve, and move to any region 

 I know of, and buy a farm, relative prices and advantages 

 being all carefully considered. 



CHAPTER V. 

 Where to Drain. 



The facts and principles given in Chapters III. and IV. 

 help us to answer this question so far as it relates to the gen- 

 eral localities and kinds of land that need and will pay for 

 tile drainage. For if, as I believe, henceforth with our ex- 

 isting and constantly increasing population, and prices of 

 land, the tillage of crops of cereals, grasses, and root crops 

 in rotation, with live stock as one factor, will pay better and 

 furnish more food^per acre, and give employment and sub- 

 sistence to a larger population than is possible under ex- 

 clusive grazing and feeding of live stock without the plow 

 as a factor; if this^be true, then on our clayey farms all 

 those areas should be thoroughly tiled which are needed for 

 tillage under such a system of farming ; and certainly on 

 our more sandy loams all ^' cat-swamps," "swales," and 

 tc sloughs " should be " tiled out " which are not only them- 

 selves unfit for tillage and crop-bearing during; average sea- 

 sons, but which run diagonally or crooked or scattered 

 through fields otherwise rectangular, and the most of whose 

 area (i. e., of the fields) is naturally underdmined and fit for 

 tillage ; for such spots and streaks of non-arable.] land in 

 such fields render all tillage and harvesting operations an- 

 gular, crooked, annoying, and expensive, as illustrated in 

 Chapter I. by Fig. 5. If you could drum together all these 

 wet spots and streaks, like troops at general muster or on 

 dress parade, and 'put them in one straight solid strip along 

 one' side of the field, or out of sight in some back lot, it 

 would not be so bad ; but like our sins, or like the " poor 



