130 TILE DRAINAGE. 



the crop yellow and sickly, is worth a good deal to me, and 

 it is worth a great deal to the crop also. 



AVOIDING GULLETS AND WASHOUTS. 



A few weeks ago I visited Mr. J. W. Day, the great toma- 

 to-grower of Mississippi. He has 400 acres in peach-trees, 

 and is rapidly fitting his grounds for more. All over the 

 South they have terrible times with washouts on the hill- 

 sides. This is especially the case where they have the red 

 lands of the Southern States. Since the forests have been 

 cut away, and the grass turned under, many fields have been 

 so cut and gullied they are next to useless. Some of the 

 farmers are making a feeble attempt to fill them up with 

 straw and brush, thinking thus to stop the wash, and divert 

 the water into the proper roadways or channels ; but it is a 

 hard thing to stop when once started. About as soon as I 

 looked upon friend Day's gardening and fruit-growing I saw 

 he was running furrows around the hills, instead of up and 

 down or crosswise. He had adopted the slope of, I think, 

 one foot in twenty. This carries the water to the nearest 

 open ditch, and prevents it from going straight down hill 

 with a rush. If the descent is much faster than one foot in 

 twenty, it might cut and guile y again ; and if more nearly 

 level, it might break across the furrows. Of course, open 

 ditches must be provided, or some equivalent, after the 

 water has been carried about so far. It is somewhat com- 

 plicated and troublesome, I know, to run these ditches 

 around the hill. But I am sure he makes it pay. His rows 

 of fruit-trees run around the hills in the same way ; and in 

 plowing and cultivating, no furrows are made that may sug- 

 gest to the water (if you will pardon the expression) the idea 

 of cutting across and going straight down hill. This plan is 

 a sort of terracing, only the terraces are run on such a slant 

 as to carry the water. As this land is mostly a gravelly sub- 

 soil, no underdraining has yet been done. 



Where underdraining is done on lowlands, in order to keep 



