nts are generally frozen out and perish; or, if any
survive, they never arrive at maturity, nor produce a well-developed
seed. In fact, every observing farmer knows that stagnant water, whether
on the surface of his soil, or within reach of the roots of his plants,
always does them injury."

The late Mr. Delafield, one of the most distinguished agriculturists of
New York, said in a public address:

"We all well know that wheat and other grains, as well as grasses,
are never fully developed, and never produce good seed, when the
roots are soaked in moisture. No man ever raised good wheat from a
wet or moist subsoil. Now, the farms of this country, though at
times during the Summer they appear dry, and crack open on the
surface, are not, in fact, dry farms, for reasons already named. On
the contrary, for nine months out of twelve, they are moist or wet;
and we need no better evidence of the fact, than the annual
freezing out of the plants, and consequent poverty of many crops."

If we listen to the answers of farmers, when asked as to the success of
their labors, we shall be surprised, perhaps, to observe how much of
their want of success is attributed to _accidents_, and how uniformly
these accidents result from causes which thorough draining would remove.
The wheat-crop of one would have been abundant, had it not been badly
frozen out in the Fall; while another has lost nearly the whole of his,
by a season too wet for his land. A farmer at the West has planted his
corn early, and late rains have rotted the seed in the ground; while one
at the East has been compelled, by the same rains, to wait so long
before planting, that the season has been too short. Another has worked
his _clayey_ farm so wet, because he had not time to wait for it to dry,
that it could not be properly tilled. And so their crops have wholly or
partially failed, and all because of too much cold water in the soil. It
would seem, by the remarks of those who till the earth, as if there were
never a season just right--as if Providence had bidden us labor for
bread, and yet sent down the rains of heaven so plentifully as always to
blight our harvests. It is rare that we do not have a most remarkable
season, with respect to moisture, especially. Our potatoes are rotted by
the Summer showers, or cut off by a Summer drought; and when, as in the
season of 1856, in New England, they are neither seriously diseased n