While setting forth the advantage to the farmer of everything which may protect him against monopolies, whether in the matter of draining-tile, or of any other needful accessory of his business, or which will enable him to procure supplies without a ruinous outlay for transportation, it is by no means intended that every man shall become his own tile-maker. In this branch of manufacture, as in every other, organized industry will accomplish results to which individual labor can never attain. A hundred years ago, when our mill-made cloths came from England, and cost more than farmers could afford to pay, they wore home-spun, which was neither so handsome nor so good as the imported article; but, since that time, the growing population and the greater demand have caused cloth mills to be built here, greater commercial facilities have placed foreign goods within easy reach, and the house loom has fallen into general disuse. At present, the manufacture of draining tiles is confined to a few, widely separated localities, and each manufacturer has, thus far, been able to fix his own scale of charges. These, and the cost of transportation to distant points, make it difficult, if not impossible, for many farmers to procure tiles at a cost low enough to justify their use. In such cases, small works, to supply local demand, may enable many persons to drain with tiles, who, otherwise, would find it impossible to procure them cheaply enough for economical use; and the extension of under-draining, causing a more general acquaintance with its advantages, would create a sufficient demand to induce an increase of the manufacture of tiles, and a consequent reduction of price. CHAPTER IX. - THE RECLAIMING OF SALT MARSHES. "Adjoining to it is Middle Moor, containing about 2,500 acres, spoken of by Arthur Young as ’a watery desert,’ growing sedge and rushes, and inhabited by frogs and bitterns;—it is now fertile, well cultivated, and profitable land." The foregoing extract, from an account of the Drainage of the Fens on the eastern coast of England, is a text from which might be preached a sermon worthy of the attention of all who are interested in the vast areas of salt marsh which form so large a part of our Atlantic coast, from Maine to Florida. Hundreds of thousands of acres that might be cheaply reclaimed, and made our most valuable and most salubrious lands, are abandoned to the inroads of the sea;—fruitful only in malaria and musquitoes,—always a dreary waste, and often a grave annoyance.