It may therefore be considered as the settled conviction of all branches of the British government, and of all the best-informed, practical land-drainers in that country, that TILE-DRAINAGE WILL ENDURE FIFTY YEARS AT LEAST, if properly executed.
This is long enough to satisfy any American; for the migratory habits of our citizens, and the constant changes of cultivated fields into village and city lots, prevent our imagination even conceiving the idea that we or our posterity can remain for half a century upon the same farm.
It is much easier, however, to lay tile-drains so that they will not be of use half of fifty years, than to make them permanent in their effect. Tile-drainage, it cannot be too much enforced, is an operation requiring great care and considerable skill—altogether more care and skill than our common laborers, or even most of our farmers, are accustomed to exercise in their farm operations.
A blunder in draining, like the blunder of a physician, may be soon concealed by the grass that grows over it, but can never be corrected. Drainage is a new art in this country, and tile-making is a new art. Without good, hard-burnt tiles, no care or skill can make permanent work.
Tile-drainage will endure so long as the tiles last, if the work be properly done.
There is no reason why a tile should not last in the ground as long as a brick will last. Bricks will fall to pieces in the ground in a very short time if not hard-burnt, while hard-burnt bricks of good clay will last as long as granite.
Tiles must be hard-burnt in order to endure. But this is not all. Drains fail from various other causes than the crumbling of the tiles. They are frequently obstructed by mice, moles, frogs, and vermin of all kinds, if not protected at the outlet. They are often destroyed by the treading of cattle, and by the deposit of mud at the outlet, through insufficient care. They are liable to be filled with sand, through want of care in protecting the joints in laying, and through want of collars, and other means of keeping them in line. They are liable, too, to fill up by deposits of sand and the like, by being laid lower in some places than the parts nearer the outlet, so that the slack places catch and retain whatever is brought down, till the pipe is filled.
Frost is an enemy which in this country we have to contend with, more than in any other, where tile-drainage has been much practiced.
Upon all these points, remarks will be found under the appropriate heads; and these suggestions are repeated here, because we know that haste and want of skill are likely to do much injury to the cause which we advocate. Any work that requires only energy and progress, is safe in American hands; but cautious and slow operations are by no means to their taste.
Dickens says, that on railways and coaches, wherever in England they say, "All right," the Americans use, instead, the phrase, "Go ahead." In tile-drainage, the motto, "All right," will be found far more safe than the motto, "Go ahead."