86 



STATEMENT OF CHABLES W. MANN", 

 To the Committee on Under draining' : 



The piece of land I enter for premium contains one 

 acre, and has never grown a crop worth fifty dollars, pre- 

 vious to this season, on account of its wet and soggy con- 

 dition. The soil is a heavy black loam, about afoot deep, 

 with a foot to two feet of hard clayey subsoil underlying 

 it, and beneath the latter a sharp gravel or coarse sand. 

 Along one side of the piece runs an open brook which 

 has been lowered to the depth of three and one-half feet ; 

 on the opposite side from the brook a ditch was dug the 

 whole length of the piece, and across the lower end to 

 connect with the brook, and ten cross drains were also 

 put in at about forty feet apart, and at a depth of three 

 feet, running from the long drain to the brook. The 

 drains were laid with hard pine boards well filled with 

 oil, taken from the floors of the old Washington Mills in 

 Lawrence, laid so as to make an open channel, perhaps 

 six by ten inches, then covered with small stones^ and the 

 soil returned. The drains were dug deep enough to go 

 below the clay into the sand or gravel, and would have 

 been useless if only two feet deep, instead of three feet, 

 but two or three hours after one of the heaviest showers 

 this season, would find no water standing on the surface, 

 while every drain was doing good work. 

 The cost of draining was, 



Eighty-two days' work, at |1.25, $103 00 



Boards. 10 00 



$113 00 



This year's crop was 300 bushels of good onions, worth 

 at least $250, and the ground is now in condition for fine 

 crops in years to come. It would be hard for the com- 

 mittee, or any stranger, to fully realize the change in this 

 piece of ground from the wet meadow that at times was 

 too soft for a team to cross it, to the mellow garden it 

 now is. 



