nstant volume of air is
propelled with such force as to set the whole boiling and foaming
like a little cataract. One man at the engine and two at the hose
in the distant field perform the whole operation. The chapped and
"baky" surface of the farm is thus softened and enriched at will,
and rendered productive.

Now, this operation seems to constitute the present distinctive
speciality of Alderman Mechi's Tiptree Farm. Will it pay? ask a
thousand voices. In how many years will he get his money back?
Give us the balance sheet of the experiment. A New Englander,
favorably impressed with the process, would be likely to answer
these questions by another, and ask, will _drainage_ pay? Not in
one year, assuredly, nor in five; not in ten, perhaps. The British
Government assumes that all the expenditure upon under-drainage will
be paid back in fifteen or twenty years at the farthest. It lends
money to the land-owner on this basis; and the land-owner stipulates
with his tenant that he shall reimburse him by annual instalments of
six or seven per cent. until the whole cost of the operation is
liquidated. Thus the tenant-farmer is willing to pay six, sometimes
seven per cent. annually, for twenty years, for the increased
capacity of production which drainage gives to the farm he
cultivates. At the end of that period the Government is paid by the
landlord, and the landlord by the tenant, and the tenant by his
augmented crops for the whole original outlay upon the land. For
aught either of the three parties to the operation knows to the
contrary, it must all be done over again at the end of twenty years.
The system is too young yet, even in England, for any one to say how
long a course of tubing will last, or how often it must be relaid.

One point, therefore, has been gained. No intelligent English
farmer, who has tried the system, now asks if under-drainage will
pay; nor does he expect that it will pay back the whole expenditure
in less than twelve or fifteen years. Here is a generous faith in
the operation on the side of all the parties concerned. Then why
should not Alderman Mechi's irrigation system be put on the same
footing, in the matter of public confidence? It is nothing very
uncommon even for a two-hundred-acre farmer in England to have a
small stationary or locomotive steam-engine, and to find plenty of
work for it, too, in threshing his grain, grinding his fodder,
pulping his roots, cutting his hay and