1857. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



631 



Boston, that the freight equals the cost of the tiles, 

 and I know of no other works in New England, 

 where tiles are made. 



The Patent Office Report for 1856, which has 

 not yet been generally distributed, contains an arti- 

 cle which was furnished by myself, from which I 

 extract for publication in the Farmer the follow- 

 ing : 



THE DRAINAGE OF HIGH-LANDS. 



By "high-land" is meant that, the surface of 

 which is not overflowed, as distinguished from 

 swamps, marshes, and the like low-lands. How 

 great a proportion of such land would be benefited 

 by draining it is impossible to estimate. 



" The Committee on Draining, in their Report to 

 the State Agricultural Society of New York, in 

 1848, assert that, "There is not one' farm out of 

 every seventy- five in this State, but needs draining 

 — yes, much draining — to bring it into high culti- 

 vation. Nay, we may venture to say that every 

 wheat-field would produce a larger and finer crop 

 if properly drained." The committee further say : 

 "It will be conceded that no farmer ever raised a 

 good crop of grain on wet ground, or on a field 

 where pools of water become masses of ice in the 

 winter. In such cases, the grain plants are gener- 

 ally frozen out and perish : or, if any survive, they 

 will never arrive at maturity nor produce a well- 

 developed seed. In fact, every observing farmer 

 knows that stagnant water, whether on the surface 

 of his soil or within reach of the roots of his plants 

 always does them injury." 



The late Mr. Delafield, one of the most distin- 

 guished agriculturists of New York, said in a pub- 

 lic address : "We all well know that wheat and 

 other grains, as well as grasses, are never fully de- 

 veloped, and never produce good seed, when the 

 roots are soaked in moisture. No man ever raised 

 good wheat from a wet or moist subsoil. Now, 

 the farms of this country, though at times during 

 the Rummer they appear dry and crack on the sur- 

 face, are not in fact dry farms, for reasons already 

 named. On the contrary, for nine months out of 

 twelve, they are moist or wet; and we need no bet- 

 ter evidence of the fact than the annual freezing 

 out of the plants, and consequent poverty of many 

 crops." 



If we listen to the answers of farmers, when 

 asked as to the success of their labors, we shall be 

 surprised, perhaps, to observe how much of their 

 want of success is attributed to accidents, and how 

 uniformly these accidents result from causes which 

 thorough-draining would remove. The wheat-crop 

 of one would have been abundant, had it not been 

 badly frozen out in the fall ; while another has lost 

 nearly the whole of his, by a season too wet for his 

 land, A farmer at the West has planted his corn 

 early, and late rains have rotted the seed in the 

 ground ; while one at the East has been compelled 

 by the same rains, to wait so long before planting, 

 that the season has been too short. Another has 

 worked his clayey farm so wet because he had not 

 time to wait for it to dry, that it could not be prop- 

 erly tilled. And so their crops have wholly or par- 

 tially failed, and all because of too much water in 

 the soil. It would seem, by the remarks of those 

 who till the earth, as if there were never a season 

 just right, as if Providence had bidden us labor for 

 bread, and yet sent down the rains of heaven so 



plentifully as always to blight our harvests. It is 

 rare that we do not have a most remarkable sea- 

 son, with respect to moisture especially. It is al- 

 ways too wet or too dry. Our potatoes are rotted 

 by the summer showers, or cut off by a summer 

 drought ; and when, as in the season of 1856, in 

 New England, they are neither seriously diseased, 

 nor dried up, we find at harvest time that the prom- 

 ise has belied the fulfilment ; that after all the fine 

 show above ground, the season has been too wet 

 and the crop is light. We frequently hear com- 

 plaint that the season was too cold for Indian corn, 

 and that a sharp drought, following a wet spring, 

 has cut short the crop. We hear no man say that 

 he lacked skill to cultivate his crop. Seldom does 

 a farmer attribute his failure to the poverty of his 

 soil. He has planted and cultivated in such a way 

 that, in a favorable season, he would have reaped 

 a fair reward for his toil ; but the season has been 

 too wet or too dry ; and, with full faith that farm- 

 ing will pay in the long run, he resolves to plant 

 the same land in the same manner, hoping in fu- 

 ture for better luck. 



Too much cold water is at the bottom of most of 

 these complaints of unpropitious seasons, as well as 

 of most of our soils ; and it is in our power to re- 

 move the cause of these complaints and of our 

 want of success. 



"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 

 But in ourselves." 



We must underdrain all the land we cultivate, 

 that Nature has not already underdrained, and we 

 shall cease complaints of the seasons. We stall 

 seldom have a season, upon properly-drained land, 

 that is too wet or too cold, or even too dry ; for 

 thorough draining is almost as sure a remedy for a 

 drought as for a flood. 



Do lands need underdraining in America'^ — 

 It is a common error to suppose, that, because the 

 sun shines more brightly upon this country than 

 upon England, and because almost every summer 

 brings such a drought here as is unknown there, 

 her system of thorough drainage can have no place 

 in agriculture on this side the Atlantic. It is true 

 that we have a clearer sky and a drier climate than 

 are experienced in England, but it is also true that 

 although we have a far less number of showers and 

 of rainy days, we have a greater quantity of rain 

 in the year. 



, The necessity of drainage, however, does not de- 

 pend so much upon the quantity of water which 

 falls or flows upon land, nor upon the power of the 

 sun to carry it oS" by evaporation, as upon the char- 

 acter of subsoil. The vast quantity of water which 

 Nature pours upon every acre of subsoil annually, 

 were it all removed by evaporation, alone, would 

 render the whole country barren ; but Nature her- 

 self has kindly done the work of draining upon a 

 large proportion of our land, so that only a health- 

 ful proportion of the water which falls on the earth 

 passes off at the surface, by the influence of the 

 sun. 



If the subsoil is of sand or gravel, or of other po- 

 rous earth, that portion of the water not evaporated 

 passes off below by natural drainage. If the sub- 

 soil be of clay, rock, or other impervious substances, 

 the downward course of the water is checked, and 

 it remains stagnant, or bursts out upon the surface 

 in the form of springs. 



