786 [Assembly 



Immediately after the water is removed from the land, the air at 

 once penetrates and posses«;es itself of all the vacant spaces ; the 

 consequence is that the roots of growing plants descend likewise, and 

 find a virgin soil of great depth ; accumulated by continued wash- 

 ing of the rain, perhaps for centuries. It will strike you as a ma- 

 terial consequence, that the deeper you make your drains, the great- 

 er the depth of available soil will be afforded for the purpose of 

 vegetable growth. Wheat and clover will extend their roots four 

 feet in depth, if the soil will admit of it. Practical men in Europe 

 have found that the effects of draining have increased the products of 

 their farms sufficient to pay for the most expensive system of drain- 

 age, in three years. 



There is a private gentleman in Great Britain, who has made over 

 350 miles of drains on a single farm of 1,000 acres of land. Be- 

 fore it was drained, he rented it for $2 per acre, and afterwards for 

 $8. As soon as the land became dry, the agriculturist had an op- 

 portunity afforded him of displaying his exertions to advantage. 

 Bones, ashes, nitrate of soda, lime, and other artificial manures, which 

 on his wet soil exhibited no fertilizing virtue, now yield him ade- 

 quate remuneration for all his labor and expenditure. The man wha 

 drains and improves a wet piece of bog land, should be looked upon 

 by all his neighbors as a public benefactor; for the reason that mists, 

 mildews, miasma, &c., arise irora such land, and injure all the crops 

 in its immediate vicinity; and not only that, but they do far greater 

 injury to the surrounding population, by causing intermittent, bil- 

 ious, typhus fever, fever and ague, &,c. By drainage, then, the cli- 

 mate of the locality is entirely changed, in reference to the general 

 health of the inhabitants, and the growth of plants. Dr. Wilson, in 

 the English Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. 12, page 317, has 

 shown, that fever and ague, which formed nearly one half of all the 

 diseases of the population during the former ten years, had almost wholly 

 disappeared during the latter ten, in consequence of the general ex- 

 tension of an efficient drainage throughout that part of the country, 

 (district of Kelso,) while, at the sarue time the fatality of disease, or 

 the comparative number of deaths from every 100 cases of serious 

 ailment, has diminished in the proportion of 4 to 2. Such benefi- 

 cial results, though not immediately sought for by the practical farm- 

 er, yet are the inevitable results of his successful exertion. Apart 

 therefore, from mere considerations of pecuniary profit, a desire to 

 promote the general comfort and happiness of the entire inhabitants 

 of a district, may fairly influence the possessor of land to forward 

 this method of ameliorating the soil; while the whole people on the 



