210 
THOROUGH DRAINAGE. 
Like many other countries which depend up¬ 
on a single staple crop, this sunk into a state of 
unproductiveness, after its staple, tobacco, failed 
to remunerate the cultivator. Lands which once ! 
gave forth goiden harvests, returned to a state 
of wooded wildness. A hundred years works 
wendrous changes. Old walls of extensive 
mansions, seen through avenues of old trees; 
fine old churches, dilapidated, though yet strong 
in their old age, speak of what this region was, 
ere Washington was born, for here was his 
birthplace. Till within a few years, but a little 
of the country besides the alluvial bottoms of 
the Potomac or Rappahannock, such as those 
of Colonel Carter, were considered worth culti¬ 
vating. Now, a new era is dawning upon this 
long-neglected, poverty-stricken portion of Vir¬ 
ginia. Guano, lime, plaster, bone dust, and 
other fertilisers have been imported; better 
plows, and other implements used; and if ever 
that adage was applicable to any country, 
it is to this, for truly, the wilderness has been 
made to blossom like the rose. Not only the 
desert places in the forest have been renovated, 
but such lands as those at Sabine Hall have 
been made to double their products. 
Taking all things into consideration, there 
are few more desirable sections of our great 
country than this one, so long neglected and al¬ 
most despised on account of its poverty. Cer¬ 
tainly, there are few places that have more of 
the characteristics desirable to make a comfor¬ 
table home, than can be found upon the fine 
plantation and noble old hall of the place I have 
endeavored to draw such a picture of as would 
interest my readers. Solon Robinson. 
--o--- 
THOROUGH DRAINAGE. 
We hope soon to have the pleasure of record¬ 
ing some of the favorable effects of subsoil 
drainage, in our own neighborhood, as a few of 
our intelligent friends on Staten Island, have, at 
our suggestion, imported a tile machine for the 
purpose of forming the materials for this impor¬ 
tant improvement. The undertaking is in the 
hands of spirited and wealthy persons, whose 
hearts as well as purses, are m the enterprise; 
and we are certain to hear favorable results 
from their efforts. Strange as it may seem, we 
have hitherto not had a single instance of thor¬ 
ough drainage in the neighborhood of this me¬ 
tropolis of half a world, where choice land is 
worth from $150 to $300 per acre for cultiva¬ 
tion alone, for farming and horticultural pur¬ 
poses. Under-drainage, if thoroughly done, will 
cost from $20 to $40, and if in excessively stiff 
clay, perhaps $50 to $75 per acre. But we 
are satisfied that no land requiring drainage 
will be benefitted less than 25 per cent., while 
the very stiff clays will be much more than 
doubled in value, for all tillage purposes. 
What then is the result 1 Taking the mini¬ 
mum price of land for agricultural purposes, 
and the minimum improvement of it by drain¬ 
age, we shall have an increase of their intrinsic 
worth by this operation, of $37.50 per acre, while 
in the more valuable and stiffest clay, we may 
have an increase of more than $150. This last 
amount of improvement, we have no doubt will 
be fully realised in some of thb lands now sur¬ 
rounding the city of New York. 
Of the wonderful effects produced by under¬ 
drainage, we quote from a late Agricultural Ga¬ 
zette, (English paper,) the experience of one of 
its intelligent correspondents, Mr. J. M. Paine. 
He says: 
I have drained land of the very stiffest descrip¬ 
tion over a very considerable extent, (during 
the last eight or ten years.) and have had no 
occasion to use any furrows whatever. The 
land upon which I have operated is the gault 
clay , which is by many degrees stiffer and more 
compact than the London clay. Here, for acre 
after acre there is not a single furrow, and I can 
safely assert that after the late unusually heavy 
rains of last January upon these fields, when 
the rain had ceased an hour or two, no water 
whatever could be seen, though it was running 
. away in torrents through the drains. 
Many years ago, I experimented on this de¬ 
scription of land on a small scale; and I then 
found that the drains ought not -to be more than 
15 feet apart in order to be thoroughly efficient. 
This gave me confidence as to the method to be 
adopted in my future proceedings, though I 
must confess I was half deterred by the prospec¬ 
tive cost; it was enormous, equal to half the fee 
simple of the original value of the ground. But 
I persevered, and I am happy to add that I have 
had no reason to repent of the outlay, as I have 
been amply repaid in the subsequently exuber¬ 
ant fertility of the soil thus treated. In this 
land, the drains are from four to five feet deep 
and from twelve to fifteen feet apart. The cost 
was £16 per acre. And here I again repeat, 
that, after the heaviest rains or melted snow, the 
surface of the land is in appearance as dry as 
if it rested on a sand bed. 
Only a few years ago, what is commonly 
termed thorough draining was a most unpala¬ 
table necessity, obtruded upon land owners, and 
was for a long time resisted; but it is now al¬ 
most universally acknowledged to be the foun- 
