1880.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
97 
ering how poor our roads are. We have town 
or district meetings, and vote money enough to 
keep the roads as they are—simply not dangerous— 
for a year—and we do well if some opposer of tax¬ 
ation does not lead off an opposition to any appro¬ 
priation—and so we are content to take half or a 
third of the sum at first deemed desirable and nec¬ 
essary. We plunge through sloughs in winter, and 
rack our wagons in ruts, or creak through sand, 
and see no remedy. Tear after year we are taxed, 
and though there are a few more roads, they are no 
better than they were a hundred years ago. 
How Is It in the Old Countries P 
They have been steadily improving. The posses¬ 
sion of good roads is something rather recent over 
the greater part of Europe. It has come, for the 
most part, within 150 years; and that is since many 
of our roads were laid out in the Eastern States. 
We have here no distinct classification of roads. 
A public road is distinguished from a private road, 
and from a right of way, but so far as custom goes 
there are no other distinctions except when turn¬ 
pikes or plank roads are chartered. It would aid 
greatly if the State Legislatures would classify 
roads and establish certain as first class, and require 
that the townships through which they pass should 
keep them in such good order that the heaviest 
loaded wagons, or even artillery trains, would no¬ 
where sink an inch deep in the mud. Eoads once 
put in such order would require but a small annual 
outlay to keep them so, and the State ought to pay 
half the cost of making them at the outset. There 
is another class of thoroughfares which the county 
ought to aid the township in making, and which 
might differ from the first class roads only in the 
steeper grades and narrower road-bed. Highways 
of the third class should be just as good as the 
township could afford to make and keep in order. 
Take the country around New York and the 
neighboring cities as a sample of the rest of the 
country, and it is clear that the market gardeners 
of the immediate vicinity have great advantages 
over those at the distance of ten miles, which would 
be of little moment if they had good roads over 
which at all seasons, and especially in the spring, 
they could trundle their heavy loads to market. 
A few years ago farm products, potatoes, cab¬ 
bages, squashes, apples, and garden vegetables, in 
their season, used to be transported from a large 
section of country about here in boats, or in wagons 
upon the boats to New York. Then the railroads 
were built, and this class of merchandise was more 
rapidly and easily sent to town by rail. Now these 
same railroads bring this very class of goods from 
the western part of the State of New York, from 
Pennsylvania and Ohio, just about as cheaply as 
they will take our truck only 15 or 20 miles. It is 
therefore very important for the farmers and gar¬ 
deners to have such roads to the neighboring cities 
as will make them independent of the undiscrimi¬ 
nating rates of the railroads. There are thousands 
of acres of warm light land, well watered, early 
and easily worked, which, being within some 16 to 
18 miles of the densest population of New York, 
might and would be used for raising vegetables 
if we only had better roads. This system of 
Farmers Marketing' their Own Produce 
ought to be encouraged in every way by municipal 
authorities. The action of the New York author¬ 
ities has been the reverse of encouraging to this 
kind of traffic. Whereas in Philadelphia, and 
many other cities, the people, or all who wished to 
do so, could buy every thing which the farmers and 
gardeners had to sell of the producers themselves, 
in New York, but little of that kind of trading could 
be done—and this little is beset with inconveniences 
—so that but few things could be sold in this way, 
potatoes, turnips, cabbages and green corn, toma¬ 
toes, carrots, peas and string beans, spinach and 
pot-herbs, with celery and horse-radish making up 
the list. Country-dressed meats, sausages, head¬ 
cheese, poultry, eggs, butter and pot-cheese, with 
the firmer fruits in their seasons, are rarely or nev¬ 
er sold in New York by the producers. The result 
is bad both for the citizens who buy and for the 
neighboring country folk who are the producers. 
Draining at Houghton Farm. 
Visiting Houghton Farm a few weeks after Dr. 
M. Miles had arrived and fairly settled down to 
work, I was delight¬ 
ed to find that the 
excellent system of 
laying tile drains, 
which he had in¬ 
augurated in Mich¬ 
igan, was here intro¬ 
duced and in full 
operation, with such 
improvements as his 
ever ripening experi¬ 
ence would suggest. 
There are two ideas 
which may take pos¬ 
session of those who 
undertak e land drain¬ 
age. One is that 
stones, brash, poles, 
boards, etc., which are sometimes used as sub¬ 
stitutes for tiles, are really cheaper than tiles, 
and are even tolerably effective, and to be trusted 
for a considerable length of time. The other is 
that, aside from the proper surveyor’s work, which 
is indeed very simple, there is great difficulty in 
getting the drains well leveled, and the tiles laid 
and covered without displacement. Any one who 
could have watched the opera¬ 
tions of the ditch diggers, and 
tile-layers, as I saw them at work 
would I think be disabused of 
both of these ideas. The land 
where the men were at work was 
so nearly level that the fall ap¬ 
peared to be quite in the opposite 
direction to that which it really 
took. It is generally easy enough 
to lay the drains in land which 
has a considerable slope, but dif¬ 
ficulties are encountered when 
there is but very slight fall. The 
drains in this case were staked 
out in eight-rod lengths or there¬ 
abouts, and dug out pretty nearly 
to the required depth, which 
was 31 to 4 feet, according to 
the undulations of the surface. 
Then, instead of using “boning rods” to deter¬ 
mine the grade of the bottom of the ditch, a cord 
was stretched above the centre of the ditch, just 
high enough to clear the heads of the workmen. 
It was supported on “shears” (fig. 1) at each end, 
made by bolting together, five or six inches from 
their ends, two strips of wood like fence pickets, 
but of pine or some light wood. These strips are 
6 feet long, and about 2i to 3 inches wide, of i or 1 
inch stuff. The ends are left square. A stout, light 
line, like a carpenter’s chalk line, is stretched be- 
Fig. 3.— SHEARS AND REST IN USE. 
tween these shears, which are placed straddle of 
ditch, one at each end of an eight rod length. 
To hold the shears firmly in place, the line is given 
one turn around one of the upper ends, and is then 
made fast to a stake driven into the ground ten 
or twelve feet away. It is important that the 
line should be taut, hence it must be light and 
strong. There will be a little sag in it, of course. 
This is practically taken out of it by means of 
“rests” placed at two or three points along the 
line. One of the rests is shown in fig. 2. A fork or 
rake handle, shod with a point of iron and capped 
with a short piece of gas pipe, having a movable 
arm 2 feet long, standing at right angles to it, and 
held in position by a wedge, completes the simple 
and efficient instrument. This is driven firmly into 
the ground near the ditch, and the end of the arm 
placed under the cord and raised just so as to take 
the sag out. In this case the line was set just 7 
feet above the ditch bottom where the tiles were 
to rest, which placed it clear of the heads of the 
workmen. It is obvious that the adjustment of the 
line is exceedingly easy, as by spreading the legs of 
the shears it would be lowered, and by drawing 
them together it would be raised. Figure 3 shows 
the line above the ditch, supported by a single rest. 
Two men were at work finishing a ditch and lay¬ 
ing the tiles. One had a seven-foot rod, which was 
kept close by, and every now and then he tested his 
work and that of his companion by setting it on the 
bottom of the ditch and moving it under the line in 
a small arc. As the “finishing” of the ditch pro¬ 
ceeded the tiles were laid. They were using inch 
and a half tiles with collars. The seven-foot gaugfr 
stick was notched to indicate the hight of the tiles,, 
and again to show the hight of the top of the col¬ 
lars, so that placing the gauge stick in the ditch it 
would just clear the cord ; placed upon the tile the 
line would lie in one notch, and placed upon the 
collar it would lie in the other. 
This whole arrangement enabled the men to work 
with extraordinary rapidity. If moderately intel- 
Fig. 4. —THE PUSHING SCOOP. 
ligent and trusty, they can be left quite to them¬ 
selves, and will do accurate and good work. Two 
men had, within two hours and a half, cleaned out 
four to six inches of the bottom of a ditch, and 
“ finished ” a bed for the tile, laid and covered them 
8 inches deep, in one of the eight-rod lengths to 
within twenty feet more or less of the end. There 
Fig. 5. -THE PULLING SCOOP. 
were a good many stones in the bottom, too, which 
made “finishing” rather tedious. They had 
Good Tools, 
in fact, the best draining tools I ever saw.—The 
spades do not differ essentially from the com¬ 
mon English draining spades, but are lighter and 
with D-handles. Two sizes only are used for dig¬ 
ging, for 2, 3, 4, and 5-inch tiles. The blades are 
17 inches long, the handles 28. 
For finishing the ditches tools termed “ finishing 
scoops ” are generally used. These are both for 
pulling or pushing, figs. 4 and 5, and the blades 
are set upon long handles, by means of goose¬ 
necked sockets, by which the requisite angle is 
given to the scoop. The “Houghton Farm 
Scoop,” figure 6, as I should call it, is similar to 
the others in the form of the blade, but the at¬ 
tachment to the handle is made at the middle of 
the scoop. (See illustration.) Thus the pull and 
push scoops are combined in one, a much stronger, 
lighter, and more efficient implement. The attach- 
Fig. 6.—THE HOUGHTON FARM SCOOP. 
ment being much stiffer, and the leverage between 
heel and point so much less, the angle at which the 
scoop is set is not nearly so likely to be changed by 
