Heavy, retentive soils, which are cold and late in the spring, subject to hard baking in midsummer, and to become cold and wet in the early fall, are the very ones which are best suited, when drained, to the growth of Indian Corn. They are "strong" and fertile,—and should be able to absorb, and to prepare for the use of plants, the manure which is applied to them, and the fertilizing matters which are brought to them by each storm;—but they cannot properly exercise the functions of fertile soils, for the reason that they are strangled with water, chilled by evaporation, or baked to almost brick-like hardness, during nearly the whole period of the growth and ripening of the crop. The manure which has been added to them, as well as their own chemical constituents, are prevented from undergoing those changes which are necessary to prepare them for the uses of vegetation. The water of rains, finding the spaces in the soil already occupied by the water of previous rains, cannot enter to deposit the gases which it contains,—or, if the soil has been dried by evaporation under the influence of sun and wind, the surface is almost hermetically sealed, and the water is only slowly soaked up, much of it running off over the surface, or lying to be removed by the slow and chilling process of evaporation. In wet times and in dry, the air, with its heat, its oxygen, and its carbonic acid, (its universal solvent,) is forbidden to enter and do its beneficent work. The benefit resulting from cultivating the surface of the ground is counteracted by the first unfavorable change of the weather; a single heavy rain, by saturating the soil, returning it to nearly its original condition of clammy compactness. In favorable seasons, these difficulties are lessened, but man has no control over the seasons, and to-morrow may be as foul as to-day has been fair. A crop of corn on undrained, retentive ground, is subject to injury from disastrous changes of the weather, from planting until harvest. Even supposing that, in the most favorable seasons, it would yield as largely as though the ground were drained, it would lose enough in unfavorable seasons to reduce the average more than ten (10) bushels per acre. The average crop, on such land, has been assumed to be 30 bushels per acre; it would be an estimate as moderate as this one is generous, to say that, with the same cultivation and the same manure, the average crop, after draining, would be 50 bushels, or an increase equal to twice as much as is needed to pay the draining charge. If the method of cultivation is improved, by deep plowing, ample manuring, and thorough working,—all of which may be more profitably applied to drained than to undrained land,—the _average_ crop,—of a series of years,—will not be less than 60 bushels.