17 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
1869.1 
does not buy a farm to get his money back • lie 
buys it to get the farm, and having it he tries to 
make it worth more to him than the money was. 
If a barn cost $5,000, it ought to add $500 a 
year to the income of the farm in lighter work, 
better manure, better kept fodder, and more 
thriving stock. 
The money spent in deep and thorough cul¬ 
tivation ought to let the roots of our crops so far 
into the ground, and give them a so much wider 
feeding surface, that their yield will be worth 
permanently two or three more dollars per acre. 
Generally the result will be much better. 
The thousand dollars expended in draining 
brings easier cultivation; the ability to do work 
when work ought to be done; a more complete 
mastery over weeds; a greater independence of 
wet and dry seasons; and, partly because of 
these things, and partly from the increased pro¬ 
ductiveness of the land, the crops ought to be 
very much better than before the work was done. 
If they are $10 an acre better, our investment 
has been a good one; agriculturally considered, 
remarkably good. 
Any man whose investments on his farm will, 
one year with another, bring him a return of 
ten per cent may rest satisfied. This allows 
six per cent for the use of the money, and four 
percent for his skill in placing it judiciously. 
Let no one, then, be deterred from improving 
his farm to the highest point of which it is ca¬ 
pable, and which his means can compass. To 
be a successful farmer, he must give his time 
and his chief attention to his business. 
The more capital he can prudently invest in 
real improvements, the better scope he will have 
for the exercise of his tal&nVs, and the better 
chance for being amply repaid. 
A Question Worth Considering'. 
The real question in regard to enriching the 
land by deep plowing is whether we can fur¬ 
nish a better “ pasture for plants” at a less cost 
by developing on the one hand the latent plant- 
food in the subsoil, or, on the other hand, by 
thorough working and manuring the surface 
soil, six or eight inches deep. There can be jio 
doubt that many of our subsoils contain large 
quantities^ latent plant-food. But we think 
that it is not often that they contain any more 
than the surface soil. The reason that our 
soils are not as productive as we could wish is 
generally not from a lack of plant-food in the 
soil, but because it is not in an available con¬ 
dition. It is inert and insoluble. And the 
question is how to make it available. On Mr. 
Lawes’ experimental wheat-field, the soil of 
which is in no way remarkable for its fertility, 
he has got, by plowing the land twice, to the best 
of our recollection not over five or six inches 
deep, and by hoeing two or three times in the 
spring, an average yield of 15 bushels of wheat 
per acre every year , for a quarter of a cen¬ 
tury, without a particle of manure. By ad¬ 
ding on adjoining plots, otherwise similarly 
treated, 200 lbs. or so of ammonia, phosphoric 
acid, potash, etc., he gets 30, 40, and sometimes 
50 bushels of wheat per acre. Now the real 
question is how to get this 200 lbs. of extra 
plant-food. Can we get it cheaper by deep and 
thorough tillage, or by making and applying 
more manure ? That there is abundance of 
plant-food in our ordinary clay loams cannot 
be doubted. An acre of soil a foot deep weighs 
about 3,000,000 lbs. Is it better to break up, 
work over, pulverise, and expose to the atmos¬ 
phere this amount of soil, or to work over say 
2,000,000 lbs. more thoroughly and frequentljq 
and at much less cost, and expend the money 
thus saved in making or buying an extra quan¬ 
tity of manure? When we are enabled, as we 
soon shall be, to work our land a foot deep by 
steam, and to do it at the right season, we have 
no doubt that it will be cheaper to work over the 
3,000,000 lbs. of soil until it is as fine as a garden, 
but to do it with horses is too expensive. We 
can break it up once, but that is not enough. It 
must be worked thoroughly afterwards, and the 
whole mass brought in contact with the atmos¬ 
phere. This is where we usually fail. Many 
plow deep enough, but very few cultivate suffi¬ 
ciently afterwards. On ordinary good, loamy 
soils our rule at present should be,to plow as 
deep as three horses can draw the plow steadily 
along. The cost of an extra horse is not much. 
Then our cultivators should run as deep as four 
horses abreast can work them rapidly. A cul¬ 
tivator going through the soil at the rate of 
three miles an hour will break up the soil more 
effectually than one going at the rate of two 
miles. Three-horse plows and four-horse culti¬ 
vators should be our favorite implements until 
we are ready for the Steam Plow. 
Draining'. 
Now is the time to commence one of the most 
important parts o.f the work of draining. 
The digging of ditches and the laying of tiles 
must be postponed until spring, and probably 
the press of other work will put it off still lon¬ 
ger, until after harvest. But the digging and tile¬ 
laying are, after all, not the only essential items 
of the work. To do this is, of course, most nec¬ 
essary, but to do it rightly is the main thing. 
It costs no more to drain in the right way than 
to drain in the wrong way,—usually not so 
much,—and the difference in effectiveness and 
in durability of the work is incomparable. 
Therefore, the operation should be com¬ 
menced now, and quite^as much attention 
should be given to the plan in the house, as 
■ 'frill eventually be given to the work in the field. 
Tile-draining is expensive work,—very ex¬ 
pensive,—and it should never be undertaken 
without a determination to make it so complete 
and substantial that it may be regarded as an 
absolutely permanent improvement. Properly 
done, the work should last forever. A well- 
burned tile is indestructible by any action to 
which it is subjected in the soil, and it will 
withstand the slow trickling of pure water 
through it as long as water continues to run. 
There is much more danger that the action of 
the elements will wash away the surface of the 
farm than that the water flowing through the 
drains will wear them out. The only chances 
for destruction lie in imperfect construction. 
With such a knowledge of the subject as any 
farmer can acquire, with great care, and with a 
judicious outlay of money, it is possible,—it is 
easy,—to drain land in such a way that we need 
never again give a thought to it, further than to 
see that the outlets remain unobstructed. With 
a little less knowledge, a little less care, or a 
little less cost, we may easily introduce an ele¬ 
ment of weakness, which will fix a very early 
day for the choking up and bursting out of an 
important drain; and then commences the 
costly and annoying work of repairing. 
When drains are so well laid that they need 
never again cost a dollar, nor occupy a day, and 
when it is as certain as any thing in this world 
can be that they will last as long as the land 
lasts, all that we need to do is to charge the 
land, as a part of its annual expense, like rent 
or taxes, a sum which will cover the interest on 
the cost of the work, and there is an end of it. 
But when, in addition to the annual interest 
money, there comes every year a charge for cost 
of repairs, and for damage to crops because of 
defective drainage,—then the work becomes a 
serious tax on the farmer. 
When it is so meanly, so ignorantly, or so 
carelessly done that, in addition to interest and 
repairs, there comes the certainty that in ten 
3 ’ears the whole thing will have ceased to act, 
bringing the whole cost of the work on the first 
few years of the improvement, draining be¬ 
comes so expensive that no system of agricul¬ 
ture,—unless it be the cultivation of vegetables 
for market,—can bear the charge. 
For the foregoing reasons, the first steps in 
draining land should be the following :— 
1. To decide what land shall be drained. 
2. To learn how the work should be done. 
3. To make a plan by which it is to be done. 
And these steps should be taken now, while 
freedom from other work allows due time to be 
given them. 
In future numbers it is proposed to discuss 
these points. Those who wish to study the sub¬ 
ject in detail are in the meantime refer¬ 
red to “ Waring’s Draining for Profit,” in which 
the whole subject is carefully and plainly treated. 
The question of means should never deter a 
farmer from draining at least a portion of his 
wetter land—enough to make a beginning. It 
is not pleasant to have to borrow money, and a 
mortgage on one’s farm is a cloud over one’s 
life. Still, and we say it after full deliberation, 
we would never hesitate a moment to mortgage 
land of our own to raise money for underd-rain- 
ing, if we could get money in no more con¬ 
venient way. It is demonstrated by the ex¬ 
perience of thousands of farmers, in this and 
other countries, that the yearly benefit from the 
draining of wet or too moist land is much more 
than any usual rate of interest, and the advant¬ 
ages resulting from the operation are so various 
and so important (aside from the mere increase 
of crops) that we would accept the annoyance 
of a mortgage rather than' not to reap them. 
The mortgage ivould be a serious annoyance, 
it is true, but it would sink into insignificance 
when compared with the feeling of being (as 
every farmer of wet land is) a slave to chance , 
and of running the risk of seeing the fruits of a 
whole year’s hard work snatched from our 
hands by an unusual season. 
Points of a Good Fowl.— For general use 
a hen should be a good layer, sitter, and mother. 
She must be a good feeder, too, bright, clear¬ 
eyed, quick in her motions, but not scary, and 
with these points, she will pay to keep. Besides, 
she should be large, well-feathered, with small, 
short legs, with a small head, broad shoulders, 
and deep body. The cock should be thicker in 
the leg, broader across the shoulders, fully a 
third heavier. He should have a gallant strut, 
be first out in the morning, first to go to roost, 
inclined to take on flesh easily, generous in pick¬ 
ing out titbits for the hens, and not quarrel¬ 
some. We do not associate large eyes with 
great hardiness. They arc a great beauty, and 
indicate high breeding; hence, with perfection 
in feather and other points, they are desirable 
in fancy fowls. In very large breeds quick 
growth is desirable, while early maturity is not. 
Each of the different breeds has its characterist¬ 
ic points, and the fowl should, in addition to the 
above general marks, show them distinctly. 
