two reasons why this mode of drainage cannot be adopted in the
northern part of the United States.

First: The two-foot drains would be liable to be frozen up solid, every
winter.

Secondly: The subsoil plow, now coming into use among our best
cultivators, runs to so great a depth as to be likely to entirely
destroy two-foot drains at the first operation, even if it were not
intended to run the sub-soiler to a greater general depth than eighteen
inches. Any one who has had experience in holding a subsoil-plow, must
know that it is an implement somewhat unmanageable, and liable to plunge
deep into soft spots like the covering over drains; so that no skill or
care could render its use safe over two-foot drains.

The history of drainage in America, is soon given. It begins here, as it
must begin everywhere, when practiced as a general system, with the
introduction of tiles.

In 1835, Mr. John Johnston, of Seneca County, New York, a Scotchman by
birth, imported from Scotland patterns of drain-tiles, and caused them
to be made by hand-labor, and set the example of their use on his own
farm. The effects of Mr. Johnston's operations were so striking, that in
1848, John Delafield, Esq., for a long time President of the Seneca
County Agricultural Society, imported from England one of Scragg's
Patent Tile machines. From that time, tile-draining in that county, and
in the neighboring counties, has been diligently and profitably pursued.
Several interesting statements of successful experiments by Mr.
Johnston, Mr. Delafield, Mr. Theron G. Yeomans of Wayne County, and
others, have been published, from time to time, in the "New York
Transactions." Indeed, most of our information of experimental draining
in this country, has come from that quarter.

Mr. Johnston, for more than twenty years, has made himself useful to the
country, and at the same time gained a wide reputation for himself, by
occasional publications on the subject of drainage.

In addition to this, his practical knowledge of agriculture, and
especially of the subject of drainage, has gained for him a competence
for his declining years. In this we rejoice; and trust that in these,
his latter years, he may be made ever to feel, that even they among us
of the friends of agriculture who have not known him personally, are not
unmindful of their obligations to him as the leader of a
most beneficent enterprise.

Tile-works have since been established at various places