Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health | Page 2

water, or dark, wet streaks in plowed land, when all should be dry and of even color; sometimes only a fluttering rag of distress in curling corn, or wide-cracking clay, or feeble, spindling, shivering grain, which has survived a precarious winter, on the ice-stilts that have stretched its crown above a wet soil; sometimes the quarantine flag of rank growth and dank miasmatic fogs.
To recognize these indications is the first office of the drainer; the second, to remove the causes from which they arise.
If a rule could be adopted which would cover the varied circumstances of different soils, it would be somewhat as follows: All lands, of whatever texture or kind, in which the spaces between the particles of soil are filled with water, (whether from rain or from springs,) within less than four feet of the surface of the ground, except during and immediately after heavy rains, require draining.
Of course, the particles of the soil cannot be made dry, nor should they be; but, although they should be moist themselves, they should be surrounded with air, not with water. To illustrate this: suppose that water be poured into a barrel filled with chips of wood until it runs over at the top. The spaces between the chips will be filled with water, and the chips themselves will absorb enough to become thoroughly wet;--this represents the worst condition of a wet soil. If an opening be made at the bottom of the barrel, the water which fills the spaces between the chips will be drawn off, and its place will be taken by air, while the chips themselves will remain wet from the water which they hold by absorption. A drain at the bottom of a wet field draws away the water from the free spaces between its particles, and its place is taken by air, while the particles hold, by attraction, the moisture necessary to a healthy condition of the soil.
There are vast areas of land in this country which do not need draining. The whole range of sands, gravels, light loams and moulds allow water to pass freely through them, and are sufficiently drained by nature, provided, they are as open at the bottom as throughout the mass. A sieve filled with gravel will drain perfectly; a basin filled with the same gravel will not drain at all. More than this, a sieve filled with the stiffest clay, if not "puddled,"(1) will drain completely, and so will heavy clay soils on porous and well drained subsoils. Money expended in draining such lands as do not require the operation is, of course, wasted; and when there is doubt as to the requirement, tests should be made before the outlay for so costly work is encountered.
There is, on the other hand, much land which only by thorough-draining can be rendered profitable for cultivation, or healthful for residence, and very much more, described as "ordinarily dry land," which draining would greatly improve in both productive value and salubrity.
*The Surface Indications* of the necessity for draining are various. Those of actual swamps need no description; those of land in cultivation are more or less evident at different seasons, and require more or less care in their examination, according to the circumstances under which they are manifested.
If a plowed field show, over a part or the whole of its surface, a constant appearance of dampness, indicating that, as fast as water is dried out from its upper parts, more is forced up from below, so that after a rain it is much longer than other lands in assuming the light color of dry earth, it unmistakably needs draining.
A pit, sunk to the depth of three or four feet in the earth, may collect water at its bottom, shortly after a rain;--this is a sure sign of the need of draining.
All tests of the condition of land as to water,--such as trial pits, etc.,--should be made, when practicable, during the wet spring weather, or at a time when the springs and brooks are running full. If there be much water in the soil, even at such times, it needs draining.
If the water of heavy rains stands for some time on the surface, or if water collects in the furrow while plowing, draining is necessary to bring the land to its full fertility.
Other indications may be observed in dry weather;--wide cracks in the soil are caused by the drying of clays, which, by previous soaking, have been pasted together; the curling of corn often indicates that in its early growth it has been prevented, by a wet subsoil, from sending down its roots below the reach of the sun's heat, where it would find, even in the dryest weather, sufficient moisture for a healthy growth; any severe effect of drought, except on poor sands and