124 PLANTING OF WASTE LAND. 



ground. On the contrary, when the land is of a 

 stiff sour quality, the moisture is much more diffi- 

 cult to drain off, and the effect of one ditch will be 

 comparatively trifling. Perhaps the most economi- 

 cal way of draining such lands, is to make one ditch 

 (or more if necessary) of a considerable size, and to 

 connect a number of smaller ones with it, as 

 branches. Where wetness is occasioned by a sub- 

 stratum so hard as to be impervious to water, it will 

 serve no useful purpose to go deeper, in making 

 ditches, than the level of such substratum, however 

 little it may be below the surface. Shallow land 

 incumbent on a bottom of this kind, may therefore 

 be made as dry as it is susceptible of being, by divid- 

 ing it into ridges of from twelve to twenty-four feet 

 wide, with ditches of the size of furrows between 

 them. Sometimes the wetness of the land proceeds 

 from the moistvire which runs from the more ele- 

 vated ground contiguous to it. When this is the 

 case, th^ best method of drying it will be to run a 

 ditch between it and the latter. The bottom of this 

 ditch should be somewhat below the level of the 

 lowest part of the ground intended to be dried. If 

 the latter slopes considerably, however, a single 

 ditch, to answer this description, would require to 

 be sunk to an impracticable deepness, and it will 



