1T1 
plants singly. This of course was decisive. Other names of note might 
be mentioned, but every farmer had much better satisfy himself by actual 
experiment, if he distrusts the results of the problem as deduced by 
science. 
There are practical disadvantages attending the immediate application 
of manure, for want of time will often force the farmer to leave it in 
heaps during the summer, and to meet this exigency we have above given 
means of securing the volatile products of decomposition, or of checking 
almost entirely the fermentation. 
Care must often be used in the application of coarse manures ; as in 
cold soils, there might not be sufficient heat engendered or retained to 
ensure full decomposition, which of course is necessary, and the manure 
would pass into the so-called “dry rot,” when it would not only be 
worthless, but absolutely injurious. 
In warm dry soils, long manures would be especially valuable, from 
their disposition to imbibe and retain moisture. 
Top dressings, which are growing into deserved repute, should always 
be of manure well rotted, but long manures should always be plowed in. 
DRAINAGE. 
ET JOHN BERKLEY, BURKE. 
\ 
Dear Sir :—In undertaking to give you some history of the art of 
draining land, as it is practised in England, I feel myself thrown upon 
the resources of my memory for much of the practical details ; and de¬ 
prived, as I am, of access to the tomes of knowledge possessed by the 
libraries of my native country, I must be content to give you the best 
report I am able of an art which has employed some of the most skillful 
and scientific agriculturists of this or of any other age. Long before drain¬ 
ing was practised with the labor and cost of the last half century, and 
mapped out with the certainty of a mathematical problem, attempts were 
made in a rude style at getting waters off the land by ditching and cuttings, 
and open furrows, throwing the land, when cultivated for grain crops, into 
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