s. Draining is too expensive
a work to be carelessly or unskillfully done. A mistake in locating
drains too far apart, brings a failure to accomplish the end in view. A
mistake in placing them too near, involves a great loss of labor and
money. Consult, then, those whose experience has given them knowledge,
and pay to a professional engineer, or some other skillful person, a
small amount for aid, which will probably save ten times as much in the
end. We have placed our own drains in porous, though very wet soil, at
fifty feet distances, which, in most soils, might be considered
extremely wide. We are fully satisfied that they would have drained the
land as well at sixty feet, except in a few low places, where they could
not be sunk four feet for want of fall.

In most New England lands that require drainage, we believe that from 40
to 50 feet distances, with four feet depth, will prove sufficient. Upon
stiff clays, we have no experience of our own of any value, although we
have a field of the stiffest clay, drained last season at 40 feet
distances and four feet depth. In England, this would, probably, prove
insufficient, and, perhaps, it will prove so here. One thing is
certain, that, at present, there is little land in this country that
will pay for drainage by hand labor, at the English distances in clay,
of 16 or 20 feet. If our powerful Summer's sun will not somehow
compensate in part for distance, we must, upon our clays, await the
coming of draining plows and steam.

DEPTH OF DRAINS.

Cheap and temporary expedients in agriculture are the characteristics of
us Americans, who have abundance of land, a whole continent to
cultivate, and comparatively few hands and small capital with which to
do the work. We erect temporary houses and barns and fences, hoping to
find time and means at a future day, to reconstruct them in a more
thorough manner. We half cultivate our new lands, because land is
cheaper than labor; and it pays best for the present, rather to rob our
mother earth, than to give her labor for bread.

The easy and cheap process in draining, is that into which we naturally
fall. It is far easier and cheaper to dig shallow than deep drains, and,
therefore, we shall not dig deep unless we see good reason to do so. If,
however, we carefully study the subject, it will be manifest that
superficial drainage is, in general, the result of superficial
knowledge of the subject.

Thorough-drainage does not belong