soon
think of watering land to make it dry. A drought is the enemy we all
dread. Professor Espy has a plan for producing rain, by lighting
extensive artificial fires. A great objection to his theory is, that he
cannot limit his showers to his own land, and all the public would never
be ready for a shower on the same day. If we can really protect our land
from drought, by under-draining it, everybody may at once engage in the
work without offence to his neighbor.

If we take up a handfull of rich soil of almost any kind, after a heavy
rain, we can squeeze it hard enough with the hand to press out drops of
water. If we should take of the same soil a large quantity, after it was
so dry that not a drop of water could be pressed out by hand, and
subject it to the pressure of machinery, we should force from it more
water. Any boy, who has watched the process of making cider with the
old-fashioned press, has seen the pomace, after it had been once pressed
apparently dry and cut down, and the screw applied anew to the "cheese,"
give out quantities of juice. These facts illustrate, first, how much
water may be held in the soil by attraction. They show, again, that more
water is held by a pulverized and open soil, than by a compact and close
one. Water is held in the soil between the minute particles of earth. If
these particles be pressed together compactly, there is no space left
between them for water. The same is true of soil naturally compact. This
compactness exists more or less in most subsoils, certainly in all
through which water does not readily pass. Hence, all these subsoils are
rendered more permeable to water by being broken up and divided; and
more retentive by having the particles of which they are composed
separated, one from another--in a word, by pulverization. This increased
capacity to contain moisture by attraction, is the greatest security
against drought. The plants, in a dry time send their rootlets
throughout the soil, and flourish in the moisture thus stored up for
their time of need. The pulverization of drained land may be produced,
partly by deep, or subsoil plowing, which is always necessary to perfect
the object of thorough-draining; but it is much aided, in stiff clays,
also, by the shrinkage of the soil by drying.

Drainage resists drought, again, by the very deepening of the soil of
which we have already spoken. The roots of plants, we have seen, will
not extend into stagnant water. If, then, a