garded as the only instance in which our Government has extended aid to promote the drainage of any description of lands. While with us the neglect of this important interest has been the rule, in England the practice has been directly the reverse. For a long series of years, the efforts of English landlords have been directed to the reclamation of waste lands, moors, heaths, and lowlands. In 1797, a

committee of the House of Commons estimated the area of such lands as had been brought under inclosure from 1700 to that date, at about 4,000,000 acres. The subsequent increase was relatively much greater, as there are statistics to show that from 1800 to 1820, as many as 3,000,000 acres more were brought under tillage. It is held that this rapid addition was caused by the stimulant of high prices for all agricultural products growing out of the wars of that period.

Since 1820, it is said that the reclamation of waste lands in England has not been pushed so vigorously, but that the effort has been to increase the acreable product of land, rather than to enlarge the area. Hence the enthusiasm touching artificial fertilizers and underdraining, both looking to a larger expenditure of capital and labor on an acre. Government has shared in this enthusiasm by loaning to English farmers some $60,000,000 to enable them to underdrain their lands. It is among the remarkable facts of this munificent loan, that the lender has sustained no loss from the borrowers, and that no land has been underdrained without being signally benefited. In numberless instances its productive capacity has

been doubled. Indeed, some authorities have held, that but for the increased supply of food thus produced in England, as the result of a vast system of underdraining, the people of that country would be almost as helplessly dependent on other nations for food, as their manufacturing industry has been dependent upon us for cotton.

Thus, if underdraining has been recognized in England as a subject deserving of national encour agement, the fact is a significant endorsement of the prominent position which it has been made to occupy in this volume. But though no similar aid has been given to American farmers, yet there are thousands of them who, aware of its importance, have made drainage a fundamental element of their whole system of farming. From among these a single instance may be cited, as showing not only how thoroughly the art has been transplanted to this country, but how fully its results here corroborate those which have been realized by English farmers. The facts are taken from the New York Tribune, for October 29, 1859:

"Mr. John Johnston, near Geneva, N. Y., at one time esteemed a fanatic by his neighbors, has come, of late years, to be generally known as 'the father of tile-drainage in America. After thirty years of precept, and twenty-two of example, he has the satisfaction of seeing his favorite theory fully accepted, and to some extent practically applied throughout the country. Not without labor, however, nor without much skepticism, ridicule, and controversy, has this end been attained; and if, now that his head is whitened, and his course all but run, he finds himself re

spected and appealed to by persons in every State of the Union, he does not forget that it has been through much tribulation that he has worked out this exceeding great weight of glory. Mr. Johnston is a Scotchman, who came to this country thirty-nine years ago, and purchased the farm he now occupies on the easterly shore of Seneca Lake, a short distance from Geneva. With the pertinacity of his nation, he stayed where he first settled, through ill fortune and prosperity, wisely concluding that by always bettering his farm he would better himself, and make more money in the long run than he could by shifting uneasily from place to place in search of sudden wealth. He was poor enough at the commencement; but what did that matter to a frugal, industrious man, willing to live within his means, and work hard to increase them? And so with unflagging zeal he has gone on from that day to this.

"His first purchase was 112 acres of land, well situated, but said to be the poorest in the county. He knew better than that, however, for although the previous tenant had all but starved upon it, and the neighbors told him such would be his own fate, he had seen poorer land forced to yield large crops in the old country, and so he concluded to try the chances for life or death. The soil was a heavy gravelly clay, with a tenacious clay subsoil, a perfectly tight reservoir for water, cold, hard-baked, and cropped down to about the last gasp. The magician commenced his work. He found in the barn-yard a great pile of manure, the accumulations of years, well rotted, black as ink, and 'as mellow as an ash-heap.' This he put on as much land as possible, at the rate of seventy-five loads to the acre, ploughed it in deeply, sowed his grain, cleaned out the weeds as well as he could, and the land on which he was to starve gave him about twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre. The result was, as usual, attributed to luck, and any thing but the real

cause.

To turn over such deep furrows was sheer folly, and

such heavy dressings of manure would not fail to destroy the seed. But it didn't; and let our farmers remember that it never will; and if they wish to get rich, let them cut out this article, read it often, and follow the example of our fanatical Scotch friend.

"This system of deep ploughing and heavy manuring wrought its results in due time. Paying off his debt, putting up buildings, and purchasing stock each year to fatten and sell, Mr. Johnston, after seventeen years of hard work, at last found himself ready to incur a new debt, and to commence laying tile drains. Of the benefits to be derived from drainage he had long been aware; for he recollected that when he was only ten years of age, his grandfather, a thrifty farmer in the Lothians, seeing the good effects of some stone drains laid down upon his place, had said, 'Varily, I believe the whole airth should be drained.' This quaint saying, which needs but little qualification, made a lasting impression on the mind of the boy, that was to be tested by the man, to the permanent benefit of this country.

"Without sufficient means himself, he applied for a loan to the bank in Geneva, and the President, knowing his integrity and industry, granted his request. In 1835, tiles were not made in this country, so Mr. Johnston imported some as samples, and a quantity of the 'horse-shoe' pattern were made in 1838, at Waterloo. There was no machine for producing them, so they were made by hand, and molded over a stick. This slow and laborious process brought their cost to $24 per thousand, but even at this enormous price Mr. Johnston determined to use them. His ditches were opened and his tile laid, and then what sport for the neighbors! They poked fun at the deluded man; they came and counseled with him, all the while watching his bright eye and intelligent face for signs of

lunacy; they went by wagging their heads, and saying 'Aha!' and one and all said he was a most consummate ass to put crockery under ground and bury his money so fruitlessly. Poor Mr. Johnston! he says he really felt ashamed of himself for trying the new plan, and when people riding past the house would shout at him, and make contemptuous signs, he was sore-hearted, and almost ready to conceal his crime. BUT WHAT WAS THE RESULT? Why this: that land which previously was sodden with water and utterly unfruitful, in one season was covered with luxuriant crops, and the jeering skeptics were utterly confounded; that in two crops all his outlay for tiles and labor was repaid, and he could start afresh and drain more land; that the profit was so manifest as to induce him to extend his operations each succeeding year, and so go on until 1856, when his labor was finished, after having laid 210,000 tiles, or more than fifty miles in length! And the fame of this individual success going forth, one and another duplicated his experiment, and were rewarded according to their deserts.

"It was not long after the manufacture of the first lot of tiles that a machine was contrived which would make them quite as well and faster; and by its aid they were afforded at quite as low a price as after an English machine was imported. The horse-shoe tile has been used by Mr. Johnston almost exclusively, for the reason that they were the only kind to be procured at first, and on his hard subsoil, finding them to do as well as he could wish, he has not cared to make new experiments. He has drains that have been in function for more than twenty years without needing repair, and are apparently as efficient now as they were when first laid. In soft land, pipe or sole tiles would be preferable, or if horse-shoe were used, they should be placed on strips of rough board, to prevent them sinking into the trench bottom, or being thrown out of the regular fall by