46 



gro^vth of wood on much of their exhausted pasture, mstead of 

 mowing the bushes year after year, and then cultivate well a few 

 acres of their best pasture land, it would much more benefit them- 

 selves and the public. There are thousands of acres of wet, sour, 

 rocky pasture land in the County that have been burned over, or 

 from which the brush, young pines and other wood have been 

 mowed for fifty years past, which, if left untouched, would now be 

 valuable woodlands. 



My mowing and tillage land is uneven, and apt to be washed 

 by heavy rains. The soil is loamy, with gravelly knolls and hol- 

 lows or runs between. The gravel is sharp and the wet places 

 are mostly underlaid with a hard-pan subsoil. And the whole 

 farm is suited to grasses, rather than grain. 



Within a fe^y years I have been doing something in the way of 

 under-draining. I commenced on a bog-meadow of about two 

 acres, near the buildings. I cut it all over with the bog-hoe, 

 burned the bogs, spread the ashes and seeded down with grass. 

 Good crops of hay were taken off for a few years ; but the land 

 did not become a permanently good meadow, till I had thoroughly 

 under-drained it, and spread the marl or hard-pan soil taken from 

 the bottom of the drains, on the surface, and mixed it with the 

 mud. 



The drains are all of stone. Upon this lot are one hundred 

 and thirty-one rods of drains in length. One drain is entirely 

 round the lot, and ten others connect with the central drain ; 

 which, for the most part, is still open, because I have not yet 

 found time to cover it, and wait for a season dry enough to clear 

 it out once more. The other drains are upon upland. A Avet, 

 miry gully, dividing the cultivated land nearly in the centre, 

 where I had occasion continually to cross it, — but could not do so 

 with a load, — I have now made hard, dry land, by digging a 

 drain forty-six rods in length, and from three and a half to five 

 feet in depth, and wide enough to take in, at least, two rods of 

 heavy wall to one rod of drain. I have drawn in stones as large, 

 each of them, as four oxen could haul ; and, in one instance, when 

 I had many such to dispose of, placed two abreast on the bottom 

 of the drain. I usually lay stones of a foot in diameter, or nearly 

 that size, on the bottom, to keep the larger ones above the run- 

 ning water ; then fill with smaller stones to within eighteen or 

 twenty inches of the top surface, and cover with poor hay, brush 

 or shavings, before replacing the loam. In digging I use a 

 plough, an ox scraper, and, when very hard and stony, a pickaxe 

 and a shovel. A subsoil plough is best to use after the top soil is 

 taken off. The filling is done wholly with the plough and scraper. 



The under-drains I have now finished, measure two hundred 

 and twenty-four rods, or more than two thirds of a mile. In 

 making them, I have taken more than ninety rods of heavy walls. 



