No. 129.] 339 



American Institute, 

 Farmers' Club, Aug. 19, 1851. 



J. T. Walden, Esq., in the Chair, H. Meigs, Secretary. 



The Secretary read the following translations and extracts, 

 prepared by him : 



Taylor on Draining Forty Years Jgo. — The Campagnia, and some 

 other flat and marshy districts of Italy, are recorded in history as 

 having been made so delightful in the flourishing period of the 

 Koman Empire, by draining, as to have been selected by the opu- 

 lent for country retirement, and for splendid palaces. The drains 

 neglected by the barbarous conquerors of Italy, have never been 

 re-established by its modern inhabitants ; and the swamps and 

 the marshes have restored to these districts an uninhabitable at- 

 mosphere, by having their waters, their trees, their verdure re- 

 stored to them. 

 • 



As new countries are cleared and ploughed, health improves. 

 I long since concluded that we should resort to every species of 

 draining, and having removed some years past to a farm, reported 

 to be extremely liable to bilious fevers, I threw several small 

 streams into deep ditches ; dried a wet road leading to the house, 

 by open and covered drains, and I drained and cleared some acres 

 of springy swamp, closely covered with swamp- wood, lying four 

 or five hundred yards, south of the house. The multitude of 

 springs in this swamp, made deep central and double lateral 

 ditches entering into it, every six yards, necessary throughout the 

 ground. The labor was great, but the wet thicket is now a clean, 

 dry meadow. Perhaps an attachment to a theory may have 

 caused me to imagine that the improvcDient in the healthiness of 

 my family, and the draining improvements have kept pace with 

 each other ; but I am under no delusion in asserting that the 

 healthiness of no part of the world, (according to the tables of 

 mortality which I have seen,) has equalled it. And the swamps, 

 bogs and marshes constitute one of our best resources for recover- 

 ing the exhausted high lands, as furnishing employment for labor 

 and funds for manure. If the bounties of draining include an 

 improvement in salubrity, in subsistence, in profit of exhaust- 

 ed lands, they ought to excite an ardor which will presently leave 



