of the Board of Agriculture, of the State of Maine, for 1856, a good
illustration of this idea is given: "Mr. B. F. Nourse, of Orrington,
plowed and planted with corn a piece of his drained and subsoiled land,
in a drizzling rain, after a storm of two days. The corn came up and
grew well; yet this was a clayey loam, formerly as wet as the adjoining
grass-field, upon which oxen and carts could not pass, on the day of
this planting, without cutting through the turf and miring deeply. The
nearest neighbor said, if he had planted that day, it must have been
from a raft." Probably two weeks would be gained in New England, in
Spring, in which to prepare for planting, by thorough-drainage, a gain,
which no one can appreciate but a New England man, who has been obliged
often to plow his land when too wet, to cut it up and overwork his team,
in hauling on his manure over soft ground, and finally to plant as late
as the 6th of June, or leave his manure to waste, and lose the use of
his field till another season; and all because of a surplus of cold
water.

Mr. Yeomans, of New York, in a published statement of his experience in
draining, says, that on his drained lands, "the ground becomes almost as
dry in two or three days after the frost comes out in Spring, or after a
heavy rain, as it would do in as many weeks, before draining." But the
gain of time for labor is not all. We gain time also for vegetation, by
thorough-drainage. Ten days, frequently, in New England, may be the
security of our corn-crop against frost. In less than that time, a whole
field passes from the milky stage, when a slight frost would ruin it, to
the glazed stage, when it is safe from cold; and twice ten days of warm
season are added by this removal of surplus water.

_Drainage prevents freezing out._ Mr. John Johnston, of Seneca County,
New York, in 1851, had already made sixteen miles of tile drains. He had
been experimenting with tiles from 1835, and had, on four acres of his
drained clayey land, raised the largest crop of Indian corn ever
produced in that county--eighty-three bushels of shelled corn to the
acre.

He states, that on this clayey soil, when laid down to grass, "not one
square foot of the clover froze out." Again he says, "Heretofore, many
acres of wheat were lost on the upland by freezing out, and none would
grow on the lowlands. Now there is no loss from that cause."

The growing of Winter wheat has been entirely abandoned in some
lo