"Another piece of 20 acres, adjoining the farm of the late John Delafield, was wet, and would never bring more than 10 bushels of corn per acre. This was drained at a great cost, nearly $30 per acre. The first crop after this was 83 bushels and some odd pounds per acre. It was weighed and measured by Mr. Delafield, and the County Society awarded a premium to Mr. Johnston. Eight acres and some rods of this land, at one side, averaged 94 bushels, or the trifling increase of 84 bushels per acre over what it would bear before those insignificant clay tiles were buried in the ground. But this increase of crop is not the only profit of drainage; for Mr. Johnston says that, on drained land, one half the usual quantity of manure suffices to give maximum crops. It is not difficult to find a reason for this. When the soil is sodden with water, air can not enter to any extent, and hence oxygen can not eat off the surfaces of soil-particles and prepare food for plants; thus the plant must in great measure depend on the manure for sustenance, and, of course, the more this is the case, the more manure must be applied to get good crops. This is one reason, but there are others which we might adduce if one good one were not sufficient.
"Mr. Johnston says he never made money until he drained, and so convinced is he of the benefits accruing from the practice, that he would not hesitate,—as he did not when the result was much more uncertain than at present,—to borrow money to drain. Drains well laid, endure, but unless a farmer intends doing the job well, he had best leave it alone and grow poor, and move out West, and all that sort of thing. Occupiers of apparently[pg 167] dry land are not safe in concluding that they need not go to the expense of draining, for if they will but dig a three-foot ditch in even the driest soil, water will be found in the bottom at the end of eight hours, and if it does come, then draining will pay for itself speedily."
Some years ago, the Rural New Yorker published a letter from one of its correspondents from which the following is extracted:—
"I recollect calling upon a gentleman in the harvest field, when something like the following conversation occurred:
'Your wheat, sir, looks very fine; how many acres have you in this field?'
'In the neighborhood of eight, I judge.'
'Did you sow upon fallow?'
'No sir. We turned over green sward—sowed immediately upon the sod, and dragged it thoroughly—and you see the yield will probably be 25 bushels to the acre, where it is not too wet.'
'Yes sir, it is mostly very fine. I observed a thin strip through it, but did not notice that it was wet.'
'Well, it is not very wet. Sometimes after a rain, the water runs across it, and in spring and fall it is just wet enough to heave the wheat and kill it.'