194 SOILS 



LAND WITH GOOD NATURAL DRAINAGE 



The foregoing remarks should not obscure the 

 fact that in some cases it may be more practi- 

 cable to buy land that has good natural drainage 

 than to drain wet land. All farm soils need drain- 

 ing; but fortunately most soils are well-drained 

 naturally. There is a great area of American farm 

 soils that have almost perfect natural drainage, 

 and a still greater area of soils that are drained 

 quite satisfactorily. These are mostly sandy or 

 loamy soils, or soils rich in humus; and especially 

 soils that have an open subsoil which is sandy, or 

 gravelly or of about the same nature as the surface 

 soil. Water passes through some of these soils 

 so readily that they can be worked a few hours 

 after a heavy rain. The bulb fields near 

 Puget Sound, Washington, have a soil so open 

 that men can work in it within an hour after a 

 rainfall of over one inch; yet it is very retentive 

 and moist at all times. The causes of this very 

 equable condition are the large amount of humus 

 that the surface soil contains, and the subsoil of 

 fine, sandy loam. 



One of the first points to look after when buying 

 farm land, then, is its drainage, for Nature can 

 drain land much cheaper than man. Dig several 

 holes, five or six feet deep, to see what kind of 

 subsoil lies beneath the surface that looks so 

 promising. The value of a soil for cropping de- 

 pends almost as much upon the former as upon 

 the latter. The "lav of the land" is also impor- 

 tant. Sloping land is not necessarily well-drained 

 land. A slope may provide good drainage, and 

 it may not. It carries off much excess water as 

 surface drainage, to be sure, but we wish the soil 



