32 



nately the work can be d'one quickly and requires very simple 

 hand tools. 



In the maintenance of our ditching systems the future has 

 more in store for us than the miere hooking out of pieces of sod. 

 A problem that has been given miuch thought, yet still remains 

 unsolved, is the cleaning of ditches to bring them back to^ their 

 original width and depth. In a recent inspection the follow- 

 ing data were noted : From two to twenty inches of mud was 

 found in a large percentage of the ditches that have been in- 

 stalled for two or more years. This fill is largiely a so'ft mud 

 from, holes crossed by the ditch or in which a spur ditch has 

 been cut. The age of the ditch does not necessarily determine 

 the amiO'Unt of muid collected, but rather the class of meadow 

 through which the ditch was cut. Ditches cut through meadow 

 containing deep, closely packed grass roots and having few 

 holes, will not require cleaning for a number of years, but where 

 thin, short grass roots with an underlying strata of clay are 

 found, the ditches are filled with mud sometimes to a depth of 

 twenty inches, which leaves a drainage ditch ten inches deep 

 and often with sloping sides. Ai ditch left in this condition not 

 only ceases to drain the surrounding ground, but will soon 

 develop intO' a breeding hole, as but one piece of sod will hold 

 back the collected water and exclude our friends the minnows. 



Records kept for the past year show that a good laborer can 

 clean ditches in this condition at an average of less than five 

 hundred feet per day, and as labor is now worth two dollars and 

 forty cents per day it makes the cost of cleaning the almost 

 prohibitive figure of forty-eight cents per hundred feet — in 

 other words, a very small fraction less than the cost of cutting 

 a new ditch. These figures dO' not include any overhead charges 

 nor the replacing or repairing of tools. The principal tool used in 

 this work was a draghook, such as is used for handling sod, with 

 a sheet-iron scoop made to fit on the tynes and holding about one- 

 third of a cubic foot of stiff mud. 



We understand that this sort of maintenance has been done 

 in one of the up-state counties at a cost of a quarter of a cent 

 per foot. Such being the case, the meadows of Atlantic county 



