THE FARM AND FARM BUILDINGS. 495 



the time comes for hauling off the crop, as in spring in hauling 

 on manure, it will not be necessary to wait weeks for the 

 ground to be solid enough for the teams to work, nor will the 

 ground be so much injured in the operation. In short, work 

 can be done in proper season, done in proper manner, and done 

 with a definite certainty of a fair return, and with very much 

 less dependence upon the weather, than when the water of 

 heavy rains has to lie soaking in the soil until dried up by the 

 sun and wind. What is needed is more general information upon 

 the subject, more practical examples of the beneficial effects of 

 draining, and cheaper draining tiles. All of these will come 

 slowly at first, but they are coming surely, and they cannot fail 

 to increase in rapid progression, by the very effect of their own 

 influence. 



Underdraining versus Drought. That land should be made 

 damper by being made drier ; that underdraining should be one 

 of the best preventives of the ill effects of drought, this is 

 the apparently anomalous proposition on which one of the 

 strongest arguments in favor of draining is based. When we 

 see a field baked to the consistence of a brick, gaping open in 

 wide cracks, and covered with a stunted growth of parched and 

 stunted plants, it seems hard to believe that the simple laying 

 of hollow tiles four feet deep in the dried-up mass would do 

 anything at all toward the improvement of its condition. For 

 the present season it would not, but for the next it would, and 

 for every season thereafter, and in an increasing degree, so long 

 as the tiles acted as effective drainage. The baking and crack- 

 ing, and the unfertile condition of the soil, are the result of a 

 previous condition of entire saturation. Clay cannot be moulded 

 into bricks, nor can it be dried into lumps, unless it is made 

 soaking wet. Dry or only damp clay, once made fine, can never 

 again be made lumpy unless it is first made thoroughly wet, 

 and is pressed together while in its wet condition. Neither can 

 a considerable heap of pulverized clay, kept covered from the 

 rain but exposed to sun and air, ever become even apparently 

 dry, except within an inch or two of its surface. Underdrain- 

 ing, if the work is properly done, of course, after it has had 

 time to bring the soil, for a depth of two or three feet, to a 

 thoroughly well-drained condition, will equally prevent it from 



