178 [Assembly 



•tae in, nature has been more liberal to them and they possess 

 move of the organic and inorganic manures from their great 

 ^storehouse within. 



Alluvial earths for instance, are a compound of the rich sedi- 

 ment of rivers, brought down for hundreds of miles, and in some 

 ♦cases thousands, like some of our western rivers, and depositing 

 at upon their banks and extensive bottoms below. This has been 

 rgoing on for centuries in some sections of our country, and the 

 •soils formed thereby considered as nearly or quite inexhaustible. 

 'The only drains these lauds get are made like their soils, by small 

 .natural rivers, carrying off their superfluous waters into the main 

 'Ones, like the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, and others. These 

 natural drains are the only ones which our country, generally 

 •speaking want, at any rate any other system will not pay, or will 

 not pay as well as those made to our hands. We find them more 

 or less performing the useful work from the Aroostook to the Rio 

 xdel Norte, and from the Atlantic to the Lakes and the Rocky 

 Mountains. Outlets could be made or cleared out from swamp, 

 morasses, and low grounds generally, where water is apt to stand 

 too long for the health of man, or useful plants, and the water 

 from these led into small streams, and from these into the larger, 

 and conveyed away. 



The small streams could be improved in many cases, and in 

 some made new, so as to carry a larger volume of water, and 

 without injury to the banks or the land, and thus made more 

 efficient drainers. This could be done at little labor or expense, 

 compared with underdraining a whole country with tile, pipe, 

 and stone, or large sections of it, whether it lies high or low, wet 

 or dry — whether the soil consists of pure sand or pure clay, or 

 something like a suitable mixture of both. We think such a 

 system in practice, would be tapping that great magazine of 

 manure, the atmosphere, to get a more liberal dose froin it at a 

 pretty dear rate, when it is questionable, too, whether nature 

 would not furnish the most liberal supply from the store-house 

 of manure in the clouds, and al.«;o a more useful one, with proper 

 tillage, than pipe and tile buried some several feet under ground. 

 These would be likely to make a considerable rent in the farmer's 



