a crop of
cabbages, you ought to get your money all back, with a fair profit, the
first year. Had you expended it in guano or other special manures, whose
beneficial properties are exhausted in some two or three years, your
expenditure should be returned within that period. But the improvement
by drainage is permanent; it is done for all time to come. If,
therefore, your drained land shall pay you a fair rate of interest on
the cost of drainage, it is a good investment. Six per cent. is the most
common rate of interest, and if, therefore, each three acres of your
drained land shall pay you an increased annual income of six dollars,
your money is fairly invested. This is at the rate of two dollars an
acre. How much increase of crop will pay this two dollars? In the common
rotation of Indian corn, potatoes, oats, wheat, or barley, and grass,
two or three bushels of corn, five or six bushels of potatoes, as many
bushels of oats, a bushel or two of wheat, two or three bushels of
barley, will pay the two dollars. Who, that has been kept back in his
Spring's work by the wetness of his land, or has been compelled to
re-plant because his seed has rotted in the ground, or has experienced
any of the troubles incident to cold wet seasons, will not admit at
once, that any land which Nature has not herself thoroughly drained,
will, in this view, pay for such improvement?

But far more than this is claimed for drainage. In England, where such
operations have been reduced to a system, careful estimates have been
made, not only of the cost of drainage, but of the increase of crops by
reason of the operation.

In answer to questions proposed by a Board of Commissioners, in 1848, to
persons of the highest reputation for knowledge on this point, the
increase of crops by drainage was variously stated, but in no case at
less than a paying rate. One gentleman says: "A sixth of increase in
produce of grain crops may be taken as the very lowest estimate, and, in
actual result, it is seldom less than one-fourth. In very many cases,
after some following cultivation, the produce is doubled, whilst the
expense of working the land is much lessened." Another says: "In many
instances, a return of fully 25 per cent. on the expenditure is
realized, and in some even more." A third remarks, "My experience and
observation have chiefly been in heavy clay soils, where the result of
drainage is eminently beneficial, and where I should estimate the
increase