DRAINAGE MAXIMS.

  1. Become informed upon the theory and best methods known and used.
  2. Do not literally copy the methods of others, but carefully adapt them to your own case.
  3. Provide good outlets and large mains.
  4. Have faith in good tile and thorough work.
  5. Study economy and efficiency in locating drains.
  6. In difficult cases, or where you have doubt about the success of your plans, submit the case to a good engineer before expending money or labor.
  7. Employ good help by the day, and work it under a competent superintendent, rather than job out the work by the rod.
  8. Drain as you would plant fruit trees—for the future as well as the present.

I have been prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive detail work, and look at the result of careful and thorough labor. As the years come and go with their changing seasons, your drained fields are ever your friends, always cheering you with a bountiful harvest, always answering to every industrious touch you may bestow upon them. "No excellence without labor," says the scholar to the discouraged student. "No excellence without labor," says the soil to the farmer, as he drains and plows and digs, and so we all learn that success in dealing with nature is brought about by thorough and honest work.

Our enthusiasm scarcely knows bounds when we see that by our drainage work the apparently obstinate soil is made to reflect the sunlight from a covering of golden grain; when gardens and orchards bloom and yield fruit where once the willows dipped their drooping branches in the slimy fluid below, and frogs regaled the passer-by with their festive songs. Roses now twine over the rural cottage and send their fragrance into the wholesome air, where once the beaver reared his rude dwelling, and disease lurked in every breath, ready to seize his unsuspecting victim.

Think you that these changes can be wrought without earnest and careful effort? I have but little sympathy with the glittering generalities and highly colored pictures of success in industrial pursuits, held before the public gaze by unpractical but well meaning public teachers. We need the dissemination of ideas of thoroughness and the knowledge necessary to put those ideas into practical use in order that the farmers of Illinois may make the fewest possible mistakes in drainage.

Farmers Advice.

Farmers get plenty of advice. Were we able to work as easy and as well as the advice generally given to us would seem to indicate we could how easy and independent our occupation would become. In no other line of business is advice so freely given, and so much blame attached because the advice is not followed.

The great trouble is that nearly everybody imagines they know how to farm. Although these same people may never have been practical farmers, they yet seem to think that anybody can farm, and, of course, they know as much about it as any one, and can tell at least how it ought to be done.

Theoretical farming is always very fine—more so than any other calling. Very few believe in theory in other branches in business. As a rule, to be successful in other occupations, a long training is necessary; step by step must one go until each detail is learned. And it is only by industry, experience, and hard work that these are fully mastered. Advice is offered sparingly, because it is known that experience is the only true guide. But in farming theories are supposed to take the place of experience, and men who have very little, if any, practical knowledge can tell us how to farm. The fact is there is hardly a business or occupation that practically requires more study and experience than farming. A practical farmer, who makes his farm and farm work a study, learns something every day, and unless he is willing to learn not only by his own experience, but by that of others, he will soon discover that he is falling behind.

Such a man is able to discriminate between the practical experience of one and the theory of the other. If new plans or new methods are presented, he can, in some degree, judge whether they are in any way practical, and if they are, he is willing to give them a trial. He knows that what might prove just the right thing to plant in one section of country, under certain conditions, and in some soils would, under a different climate and soil, result far from satisfactory. The large per cent of this kind of real practical knowledge can only be gained by experience.

Whenever we meet a man who will not learn, we can not help but conclude that he will never make a successful farmer. We want to learn, too, not only by our successes, but by our failures. If we try a new plan and fail, we want to be able to know why we failed—just as much as to know why we succeeded.

One great trouble with us in learning is that we are too apt to keep in mind our successes and forget the failures. This is the great fault of theoretical farming. If by a combination of favorable conditions success is obtained, it is given out as a fact—no exception being given or allowed for the very favorable conditions under which the method was tried. Such things may rightly be compared to the many specifics given to cure the various ills of life. A remedy is tried which, under favorable conditions, effects a cure, and forthwith the cure is given out as a specific. Others, with the same complaint but under different conditions, try the same remedy and fail to receive the least benefit. No mention is made of these failures, and, of course, others are induced to give the remedy a trial. For this reason it is always interesting to hear of failures as well as successes, provided the real cause can be stated.

Miller Co., Mo.
N. J. Shepherd.

Cisterns on the Farm.

There is hardly any one thing on a well-regulated farm so much needed as a cistern near the kitchen door, so the farmer's wife will have to go but a little distance for water, and no man knows how much is used in a farmer's kitchen, unless he carries it for his wife for six months or a year, and if he has to carry it a hundred yards or so from the spring, he will wonder what in the world his wife does with so much water.

The cistern should be a large one and hold not less than 200 barrels, and well built, that is, walled up with brick and scientifically plastered. All of the pipes from the roof should lead into one hopper, and one pipe leading from the bottom of the hopper (under ground is the best) into the cistern. In the bottom of the hopper should be fitted a piece of woven wire, which can be readily taken out and put in again; the meshes of the wire should not be larger than one-eighth of an inch. This piece of woven wire should never be in its place except when water is running into the cistern, when it will serve as a strainer to keep leaves or trash of any kind from running into the cistern. A waste-water pipe should be attached to the down pipe (all of the down pipes should lead into one) which leads into the hopper, to waste all the water that comes from the roof until the water is perfectly clear and free from leaves or trash of any kind; then the waste-water pipe should be taken off and a pipe of proper length slipped onto the down pipe conducting the water, pure and clean, into the hopper. But before letting the water into the hopper, the piece of woven wire should be put in its place in the bottom of the hopper, and after the rain is over it should be taken out and hung up in a dry place until wanted again, and the waste-water pipe put on. If the piece of woven wire is left in the hopper the meshes will get filled up, and the hopper will fill with leaves and trash of all kinds and run over, and no water get into the cistern—and if it does it will not be pure. By this arrangement only pure water will run into the cistern; but even then it ought to be cleaned out very fall or early in the spring. Farmers will find a cistern in their house lots or inside the barn a great convenience—but the one near the kitchen is of the greatest importance because the men will not carry water if they can help it, and the farmer's wife, if she has any spunk, will insist upon the water being carried for her or raise the roof off the house, and I don't blame her—the hair on the top of my head is very thin—and scarce.

Hike's Point, Ky.
E. F. C.

Field and Furrow.

Mass. Ploughman: Farm accounts, even when kept in the most simple form, not only afford great satisfaction, but they do much to aid the farmer in his efforts to success. If at the end of the season he is able to strike the balance, and thus learn the cost of his principal crops, he is in a position to correctly judge what crops will promise the most profit another year.

The Farm Economist has this to say in regard to marketing corn. While it is contrary to general opinion, it is nevertheless true, as facts and figures are capable of proving: "Farmers in discussing their declining markets should remember that every bushel of corn sold in the form of whisky cuts off the sale of ten bushels in the form of meat. It might be well to consider this in discussing how the market for farm products can be improved." This same paper further remarks, "Where's the sense in a farmer growling because he is not represented in the government when he won't go to a convention and see that he is represented. Quit your growling and do your duty. One good vote in the primaries or in the convention is worth 1,757,362 growls afterward."

The Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter states that the new phase to the Sumatra question has brought out considerable discussion among dealers in the Edgerton market and that the prevailing impression appears to be that even if the recent decision be upheld, under the jugglery by which Sumatra is run into the country, prices for 1883 Wisconsin leaf will not be materially affected, as it can not entirely supplant its use and there will be a good demand for all our product. The editor adds: The scarecrow argument will doubtless be used by some buyers in bearing the market, but we are inclined to look upon it more as a bugaboo than many others, whatever the effect may be on future crops. We know of no good reason why 1883 Wisconsin should sell for lower prices than have ruled thus far this season and the report from Eastern markets seem to warrant this view.

A. B. Allen, in N. Y. Tribune: My cistern is about five feet in diameter and five feet deep. After cleaning it out in spring, I put about one bushel of sand in the bottom, and then let the rain-water come in. This keeps the water sweet and clear for a whole year. I have tried charcoal and various things for this purpose, but find pure clear sand best of all. It must not have other soil mixed with it, or any vegetable matter. The kind I use is white, and very like such as is found at the sea shore. Of course the roof end of the pipe should have wire gauze fastened over it so that no foul stuff can be carried down, and the eaves-troughs must be kept clean, the roof and chimneys also, and never be painted, or the latter even whitewashed. The sand is an excellent absorber of even the finest of foul stuff, and this is the reason, in addition to its own purity, of its keeping the water so free from generating the smell of ammonia.

Peoria Transcript: During some of the comparatively idle days of winter, the farmer may combine pleasure with profit by hitching up, taking his family, and driving to some one of his successful farm neighbors for a friendly visit. Such an act may be looked upon by the man-of-toil as a poor excuse to get out of doing a day's work, but we venture that he who tries the experiment once will be very apt to repeat it as often as time or opportunity will justify. In our neighborhood, and we presume the same condition of affairs exists in nearly every locality, there are farmers who have lived within a mile or two of each other for years, who hardly know their neighbors from a stranger when they meet upon the public highway or at town meeting, and as for going to the house, nothing short of death in the family or some event of great importance will ever bring them into the friendly relations which should exist between neighboring farmers.

A New Jersey correspondent of the Rural New Yorker writes: My clear water carp pond covers an area of about three-fourths of an acre, and is located about eighty feet below springs in the hillside, which furnish a never-failing supply of pure, clear water. The normal temperature of these springs, where they empty into the pond, varies but little according to season, but maintains an average of fifty degrees, Fah. Several times through the summer I found the water in the pond indicated an average of 80 degrees, Fah. The pond is so constructed that the water is constantly drawn from the bottom, thus keeping the surface at this high temperature. About one-half the pond is covered with mud to the depth of two feet or more—an essential in all carp ponds for hibernating. A limited supply of pure German carp fingerlings to place in the pond was sent me by Prof. S. F. Baird, United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, Washington, D. C., and placed therein on April 6th last. No food was given besides that which grew in the pond. I saw them at rare intervals during the summer, and was agreeably surprised, when I drew the pond November 16th last past, to find that they had grown to be sixteen inches in length, and a pair weighed eight pounds.