20 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 



3. No underdrains should be laid at a less depth than three 

 feet, and four is a better one than three. The deeper a drain, 

 the greater will be the area which it will dry. 



4. The principles of land drainage may be acquired from the 

 books, but the practical application of these can be learned 

 only in the ditch. Any person afraid of soiling his hands or 

 his clothes had best keep out of it. It is a wet and dirty busi- 

 ness, but it unfolds to the agricultural student some of the mys- 

 teries of aqueous circulation and changes worthless bogs to fer- 

 tile fields. The cutting of his main ditch through the mud, 

 against the protestations of the frogs, turtles, water snakes, and 

 muskrats, to the open waters of Horse Shoe pond, afforded the 

 present proprietor a gratification, less indeed, but akin to that 

 experienced about the same time by the brave Arctic explorer, 

 William Morton, while forcing his way through the ice floes and 

 snow of Smith's strait, to the northern polar sea. 



5. Drainage does not change the natural characteristics of a 

 soil. Silicious, peaty, or clayey soils before drainage, remain 

 such after their surplus water has been removed. Therefore, 

 from an agricultural standpoint it is generally bad farming to 

 drain poor land. Its real value is as little enhanced thereby as 

 the true character of a mean man is elevated by his election to 

 an office which he is unworthy to hold. 



6. Open ditches should be avoided so far as possible. They 

 embarrass cultivation, are liable to obstruction, and occupy 

 much valuable land. In the long run they are the least effec- 

 tive and most troublesome. 



7. Thorough drainage to be most effective must, as its 

 name implies, be thorough. 



RUBBLING. 



Up to 1850, as before remarked, the Farm of the First Minis- 

 ter had been losing narrow strips of shore land on its northern 

 border every year by encroachments of the river. These also 

 threatened, by cutting a new channel, to transfer to dry ground 

 both the East Concord bridge and that of the Boston, Concord 

 & Montreal Railroad. 



It occurred to the parties in interest that the time had fully 

 come to arrest this destructive wandering of the stream. For 



