_Drainage prevents surface-washing._ All land which is not level, and is not in grass, is liable to great loss by heavy rains in Spring and Autumn. If the land is already filled with water, or has not sufficient drainage, the rain cannot pass directly downward, but runs away upon the surface, carrying with it much of the soil, and washing out of what remains, of the valuable elements of fertility which have been applied with such expense. If the land be properly drained, the water falling from the clouds is at once absorbed, and passes downwards, saturating the soil in its descent, and carrying the soluble substances with it to the roots, and the surplus water runs away in the artificial channels provided by the draining process. So great is the absorbent power of drained land, that, after a protracted drought, all the water of a heavy rainstorm will be drunk up and held by the soil, so that, for a day or two, none will find its way to the drains, nor will it run upon the surface. _Drainage lengthens the season for labor and vegetation._ In the colder latitudes of our country, where a long Winter is succeeded by a torrid Summer, with very little ceremony by way of an intervening Spring, farmers have need of all their energy to get their seed seasonably into the ground. Snow often covers the fields in New England into April; and the ground is so saturated with water, that the land designed for corn and potatoes, frequently cannot be plowed till late in May. The manure is to be hauled from the cellar or yard, over land lifted and softened by frost, and all the processes of preparing and planting, are necessarily hurried and imperfect. In the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, of the State of Maine, for 1856, a good illustration of this idea is given: "Mr. B. F. Nourse, of Orrington, plowed and planted with corn a piece of his drained and subsoiled land, in a drizzling rain, after a storm of two days. The corn came up and grew well; yet this was a clayey loam, formerly as wet as the adjoining grass-field, upon which oxen and carts could not pass, on the day of this planting, without cutting through the turf and miring deeply. The nearest neighbor said, if he had planted that day, it must have been from a raft." Probably two weeks would be gained in New England, in Spring, in which to prepare for planting, by thorough-drainage, a gain, which no one can appreciate but a New England man, who has been obliged often to plow his land when too wet, to cut it up and overwork his team, in hauling on his manure over soft ground, and finally to plant as late as the 6th of June, or leave his manure to waste, and lose the use of his field till another season; and all because of a surplus of cold water.