260 ( Assemble 



Prof. Mapes — By digging a well down to water, to this drains 

 fe)be led from the confines, all the water in ordinary cases, would 

 flow otf by the well at the common level of the well-water. I 

 have used a well at the rate of four tliousand gallons an hour 

 without materially sinking the surface. So if I had poured into 

 it the same quantity in the same time it would all have gone ofif 

 to the common level of the water in the well. 



President Tallmadge — Do you consider uuderdraining proper 

 and necessary in soils having gravel underlaid ? 



Prof. Mapes. — I consider it useful in all cases to loosen the 

 land deeply, to enable the roots of plants to penetrate as deep as 

 they like, and that depth is far greater tlian is commonly suppos- 

 ed, and gives greater advantage to the plant especially in drought, 

 to draw moisture frc>m a depth, and in all weather to draw a 

 uniform supply. No matter if the subsoil be pure gravel, we all 

 know now that our fertilizers will not descend. Examine the 

 earth directly under an old barn yard whose manure has lain an 

 hundred years, and you will find it as free from all manure as 

 gravel of the surface, which never was touched. Unless this was 

 true, our wells would become saturated with manure. 



President Tallmadge. — A few years ago I had a barn consumed 

 by fire, and since that the site of the barn and yard is distinctly 

 visible in the crops growing on the field where it once stood. 

 This is in confirmation, it seems to me, of the fact that manures 

 remain at the surface, or do not descend below the soil. 



Prof. Mapes. — The progress of fertilization over under-drain 

 lands is from the surface over the drain towards the middle; 

 between drains this increases every year until they meet. Ruta 

 Bagas will be four times larger over the drains than in the mid- 

 dle between two drains. 



The Secretary noticed the condition of the gravelly subsoil 



nnder the barn yard of the Bayard country seat, which had been 



occupied as a manure yard for about two hundred years. On 



that spot to cast it into the Hudson river, som 



