270 THE FARM, 



ordinary family if the fish are properly led. Porliaps there is no fish so well 

 calculated for this character of farming as tho carp. It feeds oa vegetables, 

 and in its habits has about the relation to un ordinary gam.e fish that the 

 farm yard fowl has to the game fowl. 



A Sugge»«tioti for Drainage — A Missouri farmer relates an experience 



■which ofiers suggestions, which, while they may not be exactly new, may 

 have for many, great practical value. There were upon his farm several 

 depressions which in wet seasons held ponds of water. To drain these by 

 ordinary means would have been very expensive, because no gravel could 

 be got near the farm, and there was no tile factory in that vicinity. Open 

 ditches M'erc out of the question. 



The services of an expert well-borer were secured. He sank several 

 test shafts in various parts of the farm, and found that the underlying 

 ground was a tenacious blue clay, fourteen to sixteen feet thick, and almost 

 perfectly impervious. Beneath this was found a strata of white sand. The 

 well-borer and his machine were placed in a wagon, which by means of a 

 long rope was hauled to tho deepest parts of a pond about an acre in extent. 

 Here ho bored a well down to the sand, completing the operation before 

 sunset of the day when the work began. In thirty-six hours the water had 

 disappeared and the pond was dry. To make this short perpendicular drain 

 permanent he had it cleared of sediment, sunk tho shaft about two feet into 

 the bed of sand, and filled to the top with clean, coarse gravel from a creek 

 bed. The gravel was heaped about a foot high above the shaft to strain the 

 water properly that the shaft might not become choked. 



They are tliousands of places in tho West where, year after year, farmers 

 have plowed around such wet spots, giving them up to the possession of 

 rushes and frogs. Yet they could be drained easily by a few hours' work. 

 In Western Michigan a large swamp lay for years on the southern edge of a 

 village, a noisome barrier toi>rogress and a bono of contention in village and 

 townsliip politics. To drain it a large ditch a mile or two long would have 

 been required; but some one, fortunately, discovered that a thin sheet of 

 clay was all that kept the water from going down into a deep strata of gravel, 

 bonld(;rs and sand. The wells were sunk and the swamp thoroughly drained 

 at an almost nominal cost, kaving rich black soil, which is the most produc- 

 tive and valuable in all that district. There may be thousands of similar 

 swamps, where two or three days spent in sinking test shafts would show a 

 ready means for converting sloughs or swamps into fields of wonderful 

 fertility. 



Iinx>orintit Use of Coal Oil. — A Southern farmer says: " I once read an 

 article enumerating some of the practical uses to which coal oil can be suc- 

 cessfully jiut, in which the writer suggested that it would be an effective 

 remedy agaiiiwt the apparently mdcstructible hotter grub in horses. I had 

 a horse wliich had always been sohopelessly infected with boh grubs and 

 the small intestinal worm, that ho could never be kept in a better condition 

 than that of a skeleton, and with a ravonoits appetite, and the best of treat- 

 ment M'ith the use of all known remedies, ajjpeared to bo nothing more or 

 less than an improved typo of a successful worm ma7iufact<n-y. Out of pa- 

 tience and disgusted with my patient, and not knowing how much kerosene 

 a horse could take withoait injury, yet determined to " kill or euro "—not 

 caring much which— I commenced to drench with a gill of oil, intending to 

 clouble tho doeo every day till a " cure " or a " kill " wag effected. On the 



