212 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
wogs -with which we are all so familiar. These, 
as we all know, have, at first, tails, hut no legs, 
then hind-legs, then fore-legs, then the tail is 
absorbed, and the little toads come up from the 
water, often in great numbers. Tree-toads and 
frogs undergo the same transformations. The 
common northern tree-toad, (Hyla versicolor) 
lives chiefly in open woods upon decayed mossy 
trees, the color of which it closely resembles. 
The ends of its toes are flattened into roundish 
disks, with whicb, partly by means of the pres- 
sure of the air, but chiefly by a sticky secretion, 
it is able to walk upon the under sides of smooth 
substances. All these animals are not properly 
amphibious, but live in comfort only in a moist 
atmosphere, resorting to the water only at breed- 
ing time. On moist days and evenings the}'' are 
most active, and the tree-toads are especially 
noisy when a rain storm is approaching. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 43. 
In making out my income tax, the Assessor 
demurred to the large sum I had expended for 
labor. He is himself a farmer and " could not 
understand," he said, "how so much money 
could be spent." 
" I have not spent quite $8 an acre, and if I 
could have afforded it, and could have got the 
right kind of men, and could have bestowed the 
necessary supervision, I would have spent double 
the amount." 
" Well," he replied, "I can't allow it. I never 
heard of such a case. Mr. Black sold $3,600 
from his farm last year, and only deducts $300 
for hired help." 
"How large a farm has he?" 
" One hundred acres." 
" His own labor and that of his children 
would be worth at least $500 in addition to the 
$300 ; and this brings it up to ray figures, or $8 
an acre. This farm is probably the most favor- 
able one for j'our purpose that you can select. 
The small farmers, taking their own time into 
account, really employ more labor than the 
large farmers — and this is one reason why their 
farms are more productive. I confess, however, 
that I am unable to see how a man can, on a 
farm of 100 acres, get such large returns, and 
expend onty $300 for hired help." 
" He has a splendid wheat farm. Not an acre 
of it that is not naturally underdrained. He 
grows large crops of clover and plows them in 
for wheat, and this is better than guano or phos- 
phates. Tou can spend all the money you like 
on 3 T ourfarm, and never make it as good as his." 
" That may be, but I think I have a legal 
right to spend it, and if I do spend it, I do not 
see why you should not allow it. Eveiybody 
can not have the best farms. Some of us must 
take the poor ones, or let them remain untilled 
and unproductive. And the man who takes a 
run down farm, and endeavors to bring it up, 
injures no one but himself; and it is hardly fair 
to tax him for every little improvement that he 
makes, or subject him to ridicule and abuse." 
In my case they do both. If I set out a few 
evergreens and ornamental shrubs around the 
house, and raise grass andafewflowersunder the 
dining-room window r , instead of potatoes and 
cabbage, they call it fancy farming and a great 
waste of land, and yet at the same time put an 
additional thousand dollars tax on the farm. 
It would seem as though the farmers them- 
selves, the local Assessors, Railroad Companies, 
and the Government itself, were all opposed to 
improved agriculture. Last year I ordered a 
ton of raw-bone phosphate from Philadelphia, 
and the Erie Railroad Company charged me 
$22 for freight ! I do not know, but I presume 
they would have carried a ton of whiskey or 
tobacco for half the money. Of all improve- 
ments most needed in American agriculture, un- 
derdrainiug confessedly stands at the head, and 
yet it is this very improvement that the Govern- 
ment specially singles out as one which cannot 
be deducted from the Income tax. According 
to John Johnston's experience, he sometimes 
got the whole of his money back in one year, 
and always in two, and it would certainly be 
wise in the Government to encourage the prac- 
tice of underdraining, by allowing money so 
expended to be deducted in making the returns 
of income. If a farmer spends $1000 in under- 
draining, and the profits, as Mr. Johnston states, 
are $500 a year, the Government in ten years 
would get $250 in additional tax. If put into 
Five-Twenties, the Government would get $50 
the first year and tliat would be all. 
One would think that when wheat brings $3.25 
a bushel, people would begin to realize the im- 
portance ol fostering agricultural improvement, 
and stimulating production. In England, ma- 
nures are allowed to be transported free of toll, 
and man}' of the landlords paj r for all the tiles 
that their tenants will lay in underdrains. And 
even in Canada, agricultural papers are allowed 
to go through the mails free of postage. 
But a truce to fault-finding. The man who has 
once commenced to uuderdrain, will stick to it, 
tax or no tax. I have been laying some brush 
drains this spring, in low, mucky land, where 
I thought tiles would fill up. Mr. Messenger, 
of Long Island, who drained a twenty-acre 
swamp ten years ago with brush drains, informs 
me that the drains still work to perfection ; and 
a correspondent of the Irish Farmers' Gazette 
says he has some brush drains still effective on 
his farm that were laid forty three years ago. 
The waj'to lay them is to secure the outlet with 
stones, or in other words, to lay a foot or two 
of the drain with stones, where it discharges into 
the main ditch. Lay the brush on the stones 
with the but ends extended up the drain. Keep 
on in this way, extending the brush tw T o or three 
inches each time, so that the thick stems will 
be on the bottom of the drain, and the bushy 
branches will rest on the top of the others. 
Trample them in firm until they are lower than 
the plow reaches, and then cover them with soil. 
Ditching on low, mucky land, is very pleas- 
ant work. There are, as the men expressed it, 
" not stones enough to clean the spades," and it 
is easy work to dig a rod in an hour, 21 feet 
deep. One man dug seven rods in an afternoon, 
and finished it all ready for the brush. In my 
case, I am troubled to get a good fall, and I 
make it a rule to have the drains cut so that the 
water will follow the ditches up into the land 
to be drained. Where brush is used, there may 
be two or three inches of water in the bottom 
of the drains, without damage. Being cut deep- 
er than is necessary, any loose soil that may 
work through the brush can settle on the bot- 
tom, and still leave fall for the water. In the 
spring and fall I expect the water will set back 
occasionally in the open ditches higher than the 
drains are laid, but as it passes off, I think the 
drains will work again. In fact, there are cases 
where underdrains laid three feet deep discharge 
into a water course dammed up, so that the wa- 
ter is two feet above the tiles, and yet the land 
is effectively drained. Of course, in this case 
the " water-line " would be only a foot below 
the surface, but the water for two feet below 
that, until it reached the tiles, would be con- 
stantly changing, and this is said to be just as 
good as if all the water was removed. It is 
stagnant water that is injurious. In a dry sea- 
son, when the surface soil absorbed the water 
from below, the water from the main ditch 
would flow up the tiles into the land, and in 
rainy weather, when the "water-line" in the 
land became higher than thB water in the ditch, 
the tiles would discharge. In either case, stag- 
nation would be avoided. Of course, it is abso- 
lutely necessary that the main ditch should be 
kept clean, down to the tiles. If stopped up 
with dirt, they will be useless. There are thous- 
ands of acres of such land, now producing noth- 
ing but rushes and coarse grass, which, if they 
could be drained in this way, would make the 
most productive meadows. And it will pay. 
Take my own case. There is a stream running 
through the south part of the farm, which, at 
high water, is fifteen or twenty feet wide, and 
four or five feet deep. In the summer season it 
is not over a foot deep. Now, even supposing 
the land to be not over a foot higher than the 
surface of the brook at high water, there is still 
a chance for drainage. Mark out the ditches in 
the spring or fall during high water, when you 
can see the lowest land, and the next summer 
cut a main ditch through the land, nearly or 
quite as deep as the natural stream. Cut it, in 
fact, so that the water will follow you, unless 
you find, as you probably will, that you have 
more fall than is needed. Let this ditch be six 
feet wide at the top, and two feet or so at the 
bottom. Sow grass seed at once, on the sides, to 
prevent the soil from washing in. Then cut 
your brush drains at right angles to this main 
ditch, 2^ feet to 3 feet deep, through the lowest 
parts of the laud, and I feel confident that the 
water will find its way into the brook, and the 
land, from being little else than a swamp, will 
become the most productive meadow on the 
farm. It may be necessary, and probably will 
be, to scour out the main ditch every summer, 
so as to keep it free down to the drains, but the 
expense will be little compared to the advan- 
tages. The water will set back when we have 
a flood, as it does now, but instead of remain- 
ing on the land until the middle of summer, it 
will pass off rapidly, as the water in the brook 
declines, and even in the meantime there will 
be a constant change of water in the soil, and 
thus we shall get rid of the injurious effects of 
stagnation, and the exclusion of atmospheric air. 
The expense of draining forty or fifty acres 
of such land is little, as compared with the ex- 
pense of draining the like extent of rolling up- 
land, the knolls of which, in this section, are 
usually full of large stones. And then, what a 
grand chance there is to irrigate ! Much of this 
low land can be irrigated at a ver}' trifling cost. 
And those who have never witnessed its effects, 
will be astonished at the immense crops of grass 
that can be produced by irrigation. But of 
course, you must drain before you can irrigate. 
In other words, you must get rid of stagnant 
water. You can not well have too much water 
early in the spring, provided it is constantly 
moving over the land. Irrigating may be done 
in a very simple- manner. Dam up the water 
in the brook until it will overflow the banks. 
This will show you the level. Then cut a shal- 
low ditch into the laud, as high up as the water 
will follow you and overflow, if dammed up. 
It should, however, be deep enough to convey 
the water to a more distant part of the land, 
and sub-conduits should be cut to distribute the 
water on all parts of the field that are low 
enough. A little experience will soon enable 
