HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 245 
much larger portion of the water would have been suffered to run through, 
simply because you had, by stirring, destroyed the retaining medium. This 
simple illustration, well considered, exhibits the principles of draining and 
subsoil plowing as mutually dependent processes. If the hole through the 
clay and the trough, (which represents the drain) had been omitted, it is 
plain that all the stirring possible would have done no good, as it would only 
have converted the clay into a cohesive mud, wholly unfitted for the purposes 
of vegetation ; while the draining, without stirring the clay, would have left 
a surplus of water in all parts of the trough, save in the immediate vicinity 
of the aperture. 
All the plowing in the world will never make a clay soil lose that charac- 
teristic. The first rain afterwards, condenses it into a hardened mortar, in 
which the action of the sun in drying causes fissures or cracks, which again 
close upon the approach of wet weather. Under-drain it, and the falling 
rain passes readily through these cracks, which gradually become filled with 
vegetable nutriment. Commence thereupon, a judicious system of deep 
plowing, when this soil, before so unpropitious, becomes loamy and friable, 
and but a few years elapse before this bed of clay will have ceased to re- 
proach the farmer with bad husbandry. 
We have thus brought under notice the principles upon which this import- 
ant branch of agriculture is to be conducted, and have glanced at their prac- 
tical application, so far as is consistant with the limits of a mere Essay. 
The inducements endeavored to be held out in the foregoing observations, 
will, perhaps be met by the objection, that no lands designed for ordinary 
crop will repay such expensive processes, considering the cheapness of agri- 
cultural produce and the high price of labor. This doubtless would have 
weight with those who consider the only end gained by farming to be its 
pecuniary income. This class will find farming, in our stubborn soil, to be a 
hard employment under the best of circumstances, and will more profitably 
seek their coveted return from the virgin soil of the West. Those who pre- 
fer to cling to the soil of New England for the sake of those advantages 
seldom found in ncAver society, must accept as the alternative of expatria- 
tion, a life of severer labor that their more circumscribed fields n^y continue 
to yield a supply for man and for beast. The spur of necessity brought to 
bear from the circumstances of a rugged soil and a growing population, is 
beginning to be slightly felt, and is already urging us to the adoption of 
those agricultural refinements brought to such perfection in the densely 
populated parts of Europe. We may despair that our New England will 
