e going resolutely forward, in violation of all correct
principles, wasting their labor, unconscious even of their ignorance.

In New England, we have determined to dry the springy hill sides, and so
lengthen our seasons for labor; we have found, too, in the valleys and
swamps, the soil which has been washed from our mountains, and intend to
avail ourselves of its fertility in the best manner practicable. On the
prairies of the great West, large tracts are found just a little too wet
for the best crops of corn and wheat, and the inquiry is anxiously made,
how can we be rid of this surplus water.

There is no treatise, English or American, which meets the wants of our
people. In England, it is true, land drainage is already reduced to a
science; but their system has grown up by degrees, the first principles
being now too familiar to be at all discussed, and the points now in
controversy there, quite beyond the comprehension of beginners. America
wants a treatise which shall be elementary, as well as thorough--that
shall teach the alphabet, as well as the transcendentalism, of draining
land--that shall tell the man who never saw a drain-tile what thorough
drainage is, and shall also suggest to those who have studied the
subject in English books only, the differences in climate and soil, in
the prices of labor and of products, which must modify our operations.

With some practical experience on his own land, with careful observation
in Europe and in America of the details of drainage operations, with a
somewhat critical examination of published books and papers on all
topics connected with the general subject, the author has endeavored to
turn the leisure hours of a laborious professional life to some account
for the farmer. Although, as the lawyers say, the "presumptions" are,
perhaps, strongly against the idea, yet a professional man _may_
understand practical farming. The profession of the law has made some
valuable contributions to agricultural literature. Sir Anthony
Fitzherbert, author of the "Boke of Husbandrie," published in 1523, was
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and, as he says, an "_experyenced
farmer_ of more than 40 years." The author of that charming little book,
"Talpa," it is said, is also a lawyer, and there is such wisdom in the
idea, so well expressed by Emerson as a fact, that we commend it by way
of consolation to men of all the learned professions: "All of us keep
the farm in reserve, as an asyl