494 AGRICULTURE. 



ments in the methods of their trade, hardly any other industry 

 has been within the same time so completely revolutionized as 

 has farming, in the single item of hay-making, since the introduc- 

 tion of the mowing-machine. Yet there are some improvements 

 whose practical usefulness and applicability are universally 

 acknowledged, which find it hard work to fight their way to 

 general adoption. The drainage of moist land is one of these. 

 We use the expression moist land, because land which is abso- 

 lutely wet is either drained or let alone, as a matter of course. 

 Every farmer knows that his swamps must either be made dry, 

 or at least only moist, or be left to the bulrushes. The far 

 larger part of our cultivated farms, which come under the desig- 

 nations "late," "naturally cold," "heavy," "sour," "springy," 

 (the larger part of our fertile lands, that is), are cultivated year 

 after year, under heavy disadvantages, their half crops, and the 

 extra labor and "catching" work that they entail, being ac- 

 cepted as a sort of doom from which there is no available means ^ 

 of relief. Almost every farmer of such land is ready to admit 

 that it would be better for being drained, but he has got on so 

 long without it, and draining is such expensive work, that hav- 

 ing no example of its benefits before his eyes he " gets on " 

 without it to the end of his days. It does seem hard to believe 

 that, on solid upland, that only costs $50 an acre in the first 

 instance, and produces fair crops fair seasons, it will pay to spend 

 from $50 to $100 an acre to make it a little drier, when more of 

 the same sort can be bought at the original price. But exactly 

 this must be believed before farming can become, in America, 

 what it has already become, by means of drainage, in England, 

 and before our farmers can be as successful as they ought to be, 

 and as they have the means of becoming. Land that remains wet 

 so far into the spring as often to delay the plowing until it is time 

 to plant, after being drained, may often be plowed in March in- 

 stead of May. When the seed is planted, it will never be rotted in 

 the ground and call for a new planting, if the water can find its 

 way to the drains below. Weeds, which grow while the land is 

 too clammy to be hoed, and get beyond control, so that, when 

 the ground is dry, hoes and horse-hoes have to wage an unequal 

 warfare against- them, may, on drained land, be attacked on 

 almost any sunny day, and killed with little work. And when 



