ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 61 
.V 
uncertain and unsatisfactory. Drainage of such lands 
immediately changes their character, making a profitable 
and leliable soil, which dries easily and can be worked early 
in the season- a necessity which yearly becomes more 
apparent in raising and ripening the corn crop. There is 
also in these soils great fertility which heretofore was locked 
up but which by drainage becomes liberated, through the 
action of the warm rains and air now penetrating the whole 
mass. 
Soils which heretofore paid little or no profit are by 
diainage made to pay large profits, and to pay the entire 
expense of drainage in one to three crops of grain or 
cultivated grasses. 
Drainage, to be effective, must be deep. Lands adjoin- 
ing ditches are always saturated with water just as high or 
near the surface as the water-line in the ditch. On lands 
quite level the water often stands in ordinary shallow ditches 
within a few inches of the surface, while in a two and a half 
or three foot ditch it would stand much below the surface, 
leaving the adjoining land for one and a half to two feet 
below the surface free from water, in a condition to be 
worked early, and almost certain of producing a fair crop 
of grain or grass. 
My former practice in draining was to employ men 
with spades or ditching machines; either plan always leav¬ 
ing an unsightly bank of earth on one side of the ditch to 
prevent the surface water from flowing in on that side, and 
making an excellent place to raise foul seeds to be distrib¬ 
uted over the adjoining fields. Recently I find I can dig 
wider, deeper and better ditches with a team and road 
scraper, and cheaper than by any other method. My plan 
is to plow the ground one furrow deep, the width of the 
scraper, the entire length of the field to be ditched; then 
scrape this plowing out the entire length, commencing at 
one end, carrying the dirt back several rods and spreading 
it evenly on the land. The team continually travels in a 
circle, carrying out a scraper full each time round. Then 
again plow and scrape as before, and so on until the ditch 
is from two and one-half to three feet deep, about three 
feet wide at the bottom and five feet wide at the top, with 
sloping sides, and the ground leveled on both sides, so that 
it can be cultivated to the edge and that the surface water 
is not prevented from running in. A man and team will 
