, that the owner has refused for it an offer of $3,000."

At the meeting of the United States Agricultural Society, at Washington,
in January, 1857, Mr. G. W. P. Custis spoke in connection with the great
importance of this subject, of the vast quantity of soil--the richest
conceivable--now lying waste, to the extent of 100,000 acres, along the
banks of the Lower Potomac, and which he denominates by the old Virginia
title of _pocoson_. The fertility of this reclaimable swamp he reports
to be astonishing; and he has corroborated the opinion by experiments
which confounded every beholder. "These lands on our time-honored
river," he says, "if brought into use, would supply provisions at half
the present cost, and would in other respects prove of the greatest
advantage."

The drainage of highways and walks, was noted as a topic kindred to our
subject, although belonging more properly perhaps, to the drainage of
towns and to landscape-gardening, than to farm drainage. This, too, was
found to be beyond the scope of our proposed treatise, and has been left
to some abler hand.

So, too, the whole subject of reclaiming lands from the sea, and from
rivers, by embankment, and the drainage of lakes and ponds, which at a
future day must attract great attention in this country, has proved
quite too extensive to be treated here. The day will soon come, when on
our Atlantic coast, the ocean waves will be stayed, and all along our
great rivers, the Spring floods, and the Summer freshets, will be held
within artificial barriers, and the enclosed lands be kept dry by
engines propelled by steam, or some more efficient or economical agent.

The half million acres of fen-land in Lincolnshire, producing the
heaviest wheat crops in England; and Harlaem Lake, in Holland, with its
40,000 acres of fertile land, far below the tides, and once covered with
many feet of water, are examples of what science and well-directed labor
may accomplish. But this department of drainage demands the skill of
scientific engineers, and the employment of combined capital and effort,
beyond the means of American farmers; and had we ability to treat it
properly, would afford matter rather of pleasing speculation, than of
practical utility to agricultural readers.

With a reckless expenditure of paper and ink, we had already prepared
chapters upon several topics, which, though not essential to
farm-drainage, were as near to our subject as the minister usually is
l