indeed, all soils but sands, and the lighter loams and gravels, are benefited by drainage. In Ohio, on an average, forty inches of water falls every year. Of this, about one-third runs directly off from the surface of the ground into small rills, thence into creeks and rivers through whose channels it finds its way either into the lake on our north, or the Gulf of Mexico on our south. One other third passes down into the bowels of the earth to supply its great caverns and be disposed of through its subterranean passages, and the remaining third is carried off by evaporation. This water falls equally on all soils-the soil but six inches deep resting on a tight clay sub-soil, which holds water almost like a cistern, receiving the same quantity of water as does the rich, open, loamy soil that rests on a yellow clay or upon an open bed of gravel, and which will pass the water so rapidly through the different strata that you may start the plough in twelve hours after a rain of several days duration; while a week or more must elapse before you can plough the tough, clay, sub-soil land.

If the spring is unusually wet, it will be next to impossible to find this character of land in suitable condition to plow, until the time is past when your seed should be in the ground; and, after waiting and waiting for the ground to dry, you are finally compelled to plow the wet, cold, soggy ground, that breaks up in clods which do not pulverize during the whole season; and from a land not poor but in no condition to receive the seed when sown, you get but half a crop, which scarcely pays for the outlay of putting in and gathering. This is the kind of land that requires sub-soil raining. If you will thoroughly tile this land it will pass the water through its pores with nearly the same facility as does the open, loamy soil, which rests on a clay or gravel bottom; thereby converting it into a warm, light, mellow, productive soil, easily worked, and in some respects superior to loamy or sandy clay soils, as it retains moisture better, and possesses in a greater degree the principle of capillary attraction, or power during dry weather to suck up from lower depths the water with its mineral solvents, which refresh and feed the roots of the growing crops. And besides, clayey soils seem to receive the food of the plants and retain it in accessible form better than sandy or loamy soils. Hence clayey soils are said to be stronger than light soils, and if they can be properly worked they always produce the heaviest crops. Light soils, on the other hand-that is, soils that are deficient in clay-are said to be leachy. From such soils manures are very liable to be washed out, or leach away, and especially when the light soil rests upon a bed of course gravel.

One field on my own farm near Mt. Vernon is of the character of tight sub-soil land that I have described. It is beech land. The sub-soil consists of a tenacious clay of the color of pipe clay. It abounds in low places, dish-shaped, holding stagnant water during the spring and fall

rains and January thaws, which chill to death the roots of winter crops. When the water finally settles in these dishes, the grain has the appearance of being scalded to death. Some of the deepest of these basins, when the dry season comes, and the direct rays of the sun beats down upon them, open in cracks, or fissures, which close up on the first fall of rain, and the bottom of the basin is again tight, holding water like a cistern. I have spoken of this field, not as it now is, but as it was before I ran a line of tile underdeath these basins, commencing with the lowest and ending with those whose bottoms lay the highest, and finally draining the water off to a lower level into a ravine. At the bottom of the basins the line of tile is just low enough to be out of the reach of a subsoil plow, while in passing the ridges which divided them, the drain is from three to five feet deep. The bottoms of these basins are now dry as the highest points in the field. In describing this field of my own, I but describe a large portion of the beech land of this county. There are not many farms of two hundred acres in the beech but what have just such fields as I have described; and yet this is not poor land, for when the season hits right, that is, when it is neither too wet nor too dry, and the rain falls at proper intervals, this land produces large crops, as every farmer who owns beech land knows. This could not be the case if the land were poor. As an illustration of what this character of land is capable of in a favorable season, and to show that its fault is not poverty, I will state that in 1863 there was raised on sixteen and one-half acres of this field two thousand and fifty-five bushels of Neshanock potatoes. The most of my half I put on the cars at Mt. Vernon at seventy cents a bushel, realizing for the rent of sixteen and one-half acres of land for one year (from which should be deducted the use of my team for breaking the ground and hauling the potatoes) the snug sum of six hundred and sixty four dollars and sixty-seven cents-over forty dollars an acre. Land that will do this without manure is not poor land.

We have pointed out the difficulties the farmer has to encounter in getting in his seed in time in close, clayey sub-soil land; but the vice of this kind of land does not stop here. The excess of water that retards the getting in of the crops in season, retards also its germination and growth.

Of the forty inches of water which fall annually in Oaio we get perhaps ten inches in the fall, eight inches through the winter, and teu inches in the spring, making, during these periods, twenty-eight inches. As we have said before, that portion of the water which does not run off directly from the surface is taken up by the ground, and of this, what does not find its way into the lower cavities of the earth must pass off by evap oration. The process of evaporation goes on but slowly during the fall, winter and early spring months, and in tight clayey soil the process of filtering, or settling away, goes on equally slow; so that in the spring the

soil is saturated to the very surface with water. As the spring advances evaporation increases, and in undrained, tight sub soil a large portion of this surplus water must be carried off in the form of vapor. This, as we have said, is but a slow process, and between its tardy operation and the equally tardy percolating, or settling away of the water, through the close sub-soil, the tender feet of the plants are left standing in the wet, cold, clammy soil, until, if they do not perish entirely, they produce at best but a sickly growth. Sub soil draining carries off this excess of water, prevents this evil, and leaves the soil in a warm, healthy condition. We have seen that water filters so slowly through these light sub-soils that, unless they are drained, a large portion of it must pass off by evaporation. This mode of getting rid of surplus water reduces the temperature of the land, and is therefore, on this account, highly prejudicial to crops. In the process of turning water into vapor heat is required, a portion of which is abstracted from the land and carried off with the vapor, thereby increasing the coldness of the soil, which we have seen is already made too cold by the presence near the surface of so large a body of water. If any one doubts this, let me ask him why does watering our streets cool them? Is it not because the surface of the street parts with a portion of its heat in turning the water into vapor? Evaporation is but the process of drying, and drying is but the converting of water into vapor. Now this process, as we have said before, requires heat, and the heat is carried off with the vapor. If you still have doubts, put your hand into water and then hold it in the open air, and see if it does not instantly grow colder than your other hand. Why is this, but simply because the heat of the hand converts the water into vapor and passes off with the vapor? So it is with the land. Its heat passes off with vapor, thereby reducing its temperature, to the great detriment of the crops. We have shown that the large body of surplus water that lies so near the surface in undrained impervious sub-soil, remains there so long before it can be carried off by the process of filtering and evaporation, that it chills the roots of the plants, and prevents their healthy growth from sheer want of heat. But the roots of plants not only require heat, but, like the lungs of animals, they require atmospheric air, which should be renewed at proper intervals. This cannot be supplied if the pores of the soil are coustautly filled with water. During every Lain the water should pass readily through the pores of the earth, leaving them open to receive a fresh supply of air, which in turn prepares the roots to receive the next supply of water. Rain water holds in solution rich particles of matter, and the surface of the ground upon which it falls, acting as a strainer, prevents these particles from passing below the roots of the plants. The particles enrich the soil and stimulate the growth of the plants, when their roots have been properly prepared by the atmosphere to receive them.

We have said that the land acts as a strainer through which the water passes, leaving within the soil and about the roots of plants the particles of matter which descend with the rain. But this is not all. There is always on the surface of the ground vegetable substances, in every stage of decomposition, which mix with the falling rain, and are either carried off into the streams and are lost, or sink directly with the water into the soil and become food for the roots of plants. Hence it follows, that the greater the quantity of water that passes directly down into the soil, the greater the amount of these decomposed vegetable substances that is supplied to the roots of plants. On the other hand, the larger the proportion of water that runs off from the surface of the soil into the streams, the less the roots of plants receive of these decomposed vegetable substances. This accounts, no doubt, in a measure, for the established fact that drained lands require less manure to keep them up than undrained lands. The water table in drained lands is kept down to the level of the drains, leaving the pores of the land between the drains and the surface of the ground open ready to receive the next supply of water, with its vegetable matter; while impervious, undrained soils are, the greater proportion of the time, filled with water, often to the very surface, thereby preventing the new supply of water from passing down through the ground and forcing it to run off into the creeks and rivers, carrying with it the rich vegetable matter from the surface of the soil.

The vegetable substances washed from the surface of the soil and carried off by the creeks and rivers, are much more considerable than we might suppose. If you will catch rain water, directly as it falls, into a clean vessel, and compare its color with the dark, impure water which, during freshets, passes through the channel of the creek, you will see at once, after making due allowance for the sand that is borne along with the current, that the latter must hold in solution a large amount of vegetable matter washed from the surface of the ground to give it so dark a color.

All soils possess to a greater or less degree what is called " capillary attraction;" that is, the power to raise to the surface from lower depths moisture in times of drouth or dry weather. Sandy soils possess this power to a very limited extent, especially if the sand is coarse: hence, on these soils, in dry weather, the crop suffers the most, and often perishes for want of moisture. Clay soils possess this power to a greater degree: hence, the crops on these lands suffer less during the drouth. Besides watering the roots of plants, the water thus raised by this sucking-up process holds in solution-that is, has mixed with it, mineral substances that feed and stimulate the growth of plants. The quantity of food and water thus supplied depends upon the degree of this power of "capillary attraction" existing in the soil. I have said that clay soils

"ossess this power to a greater degree than coarse sandy soils; but even clay soils possess this power to raise the moisture with its mineral solvents to a limited degree unless the land is in a suitable (or what we call a mellow) condition. The ground must not only be loose, but it must be well pulverized. Hard lumps lying against each other, creating spaces between, possess but a limited power to raise the water. Let me illustrate this by a familiar example: Put into a saucer a small quantity of water, then fill the saucer with coffee sugar, part lumps and part pulverized; let it stand a short time, and you will find that the sugar has sucked up the water so that it is wet to the very top. Now examine closely and you will find the little pores full of water, but you will find no water standing between the lumps. Nor have the spaces between the lumps contributed in the least to raise the water; this has been effected, partly by the minute pores in the lumps themselves, but principally by the pores in the pulverized portion of the sugar. Let me give another example: All of you have noticed that after heavy, continuous rains, brick walls, where they have been commenced near the ground, are wet for a considerable distance up; the bricks seem to have sucked up from the ground the water which, by the law of gravity, should have settled down through the pores of the earth. Now, if you will take the trouble to examine closely, you will find the small pores of the bricks filled with water, but if you break into the wall and examine the joints or spaces between the bricks that have not been filled by the mason, you will find that they contain no water. Nor have these open spaces contributed in the least to raise the water that fills the pores of the bricks. It is only very minute spaces that possess the power of causing water to rise in them above its level. The bricks possess this power because the clay has been so well tempered before the bricks were moulded as to separate each particle of clay, and when the water was expelled by burning, minute pores were formed evenly through the body of the bricks. These answer as capillary tubes through which the water is sucked up. It, then, we wish the soil to possess this power of raising water from lower depths during drouth, thereby supplying the roots of crops with mineral food and moisture, we must pulverize the ground well five or six inches deep; this cannot be done to any depth in spongy, spouty land, or tight clay sub-soil land, without first draining it. In the foregoing remarks I have endeavored to explain how and why sub-soil drainage is beneficial to the growth of crops. And have pointed out the kind of soil that most requires draining. To some of the members of this Association this subject is not entirely new. They have not only read more or less on the subject, but have, like myself, used tile in draining portions of their farms. With others who have had no experience, the question will naturally arise-would you, as a practi