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on all kinds of soil, ranging from the most spongy muck 

 to the heaviest clay. Probably the most profitable onion 

 ground would be a mucky swamp, with a never failing 

 stream running through it, with sufficient fall to afford 

 good drainage three feet deep. If such a swamp were 

 thoroughly subdued, drain-tiles laid two and a half to 

 three feet deep, every three or four rods, and then a dam 

 built across tins stream, with a gate which could be ele- 

 vated or lowered at pleasure, the most magnificent crops 

 of onions could be grown every year, with comparatively 

 little labor. In the spring, the gate of course would be 

 lifted, and the under-drains, even though they had to 

 discharge into the swollen stream, would remove the 

 stagnant water, and leave the surface dry and firm, and 

 the onions could be sown as soon as we had a few fine 

 days in spring. When dry weather set in, and the crop 

 needed more moisture, shut down the gate, and as the 

 water rose in the stream it would flow back into the un- 

 der drains, and the dry, porous, mucky soil would suck 

 it up like a sponge, and the dryer and hotter the weather 

 the more rapidly would the onions grow. We might 

 safely calculate on getting from such a soil an average 

 crop, year after year, of one thousand bushels per acre. 

 Onions will sell readily in the autumn, shipped direct 

 from the field, for seventy-five cents to one dollar per 

 bushel, and you can tell as well as I, whether it would 

 pay to make the improvement suggested. Onion land is 

 often rented on shares, the owner furnishing half the 

 seed, and half the manure, and the tenant doing all the 

 work, and giving the landowner half the crop. On such 

 a piece of land as I have described, the net profit to the 

 owner would average at least three hundred and sixty 

 dollars an acre, which is six per cent, interest on six 

 thousand dollars. 



