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preliminary being accomplished, the making of 

 open or covered drains, as circumstances require, 

 may be advantageously proceeded with. In the 

 older cultivated districts of this country the 

 more thorough and refined British systems of 

 draining may be profitably followed, subjected to 

 such modifications as diff*erences in soil and cli- 

 mate naturally suggest. In a new country, how- 

 ever, draining must be, as a rule, differently com- 

 menced and executed, to what can be done in 

 such as are older and wealthier. A ditch dug 

 out as narrow at the bottom as the tool will 

 allow, and partly filled with old rails or the 

 boughs of trees, closely trodden down with a por- 

 tion of the moved earth, wdll often answer an 

 excellent purpose for several years. I observed 

 in England last summer a few drains in a field 

 two or three of which had not wholly lost their 

 functions, which I assisted in making when a boy., 

 near half a century ago. The land is in perma- 

 nent pasture, exceedingly tenacious, the drains 

 were dug three feet deep (considered in those 

 days "deep draining"), and the width gradually 

 diminishing to about two inches at the bottom, 

 in which was placed heath (heather) and the soil 

 returned thereon, closely tramped down. The 

 durability of such draining in clay soils, when 



