196 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



before the cattle, is very great. Besides, by the latter means, 

 water can be conveyed into the har7i and house, almost without 

 cost, aside from the jnill. 



15th. Draining land. Often several acres of a farm are worth- 

 less, which might be made very tillable by a little draining — the 

 water distributed on other fields to benefit thern at the same time. 

 The enormous extent of draining by windmills in Holland, is 

 sufiicient to convince any man, first, of the practicability and 

 advantages of surface draining, even on the most extensive scale, 

 and that, too, under such circumstances as would at first seem 

 to be utterly insurmountable ; and seccnd, of the capacity and 

 economy of the wind to perform the work, even with the crudest 

 and most expensive mills 1 



16th. Irrigation. In preventing the evil effects of drotith, and 

 in the promotion of general irrigatio7i, the windmill will render 

 invaluable service. In such a drouth as that of last season, 

 (1854,) the entire expense of a good windmill could have been 

 saved on three acres — yes, with some crops, on o?ie acre. There 

 is not a year when the farmer cannot add very materially to 

 some of his crops by watering them. Especially is this true 

 with grass-fields and gardens ; which can be more than doubled — 

 yes, quadrupled — by proper irrigation. 



We read of the fatness of Egypt's soil, notwitnstanding it is 

 wholly dependent upon the rains of Ethiopia, and artificial irri- 

 gation for all its waters. Does not this show the practicability 

 and profitableness of irrigation 1 For their uplands the Egyp- 

 tians first conveyed the water for miles and miles through arti- 

 ficial canals, then elevated it with pmnps worked by oxen, then 

 conveyed it with pipes before it reached its distribution. Now, 

 if Egypt, thousands of years ago, with inferior facilities, could 

 thus make an otherwise poor and sandy soil one of the richest 

 and most fertile in the world, and thereby, too, create a national 

 wealth, then why cannot the ingenious Yankee — the enterprising 

 American — with modern developments of scien'ce, and all the 

 facilities of such an advanced state of the mechanic arts, enrich 

 his soil and double his crops in a Similar manner ; instead of 

 skimming and scraping over and robbing his soil of its unusual na- 

 tural richness, and thereby undermining instead of creating a na- 

 tional wealth and prosperity 1 



If such an enormous expense of tinderdraining can be afforded 

 and made to pay such extraordinary percentage on the outlay, on 

 English lands that are superabundantly moist, then it is absurd 



