Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with TilesFrench, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Science
Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles
French, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Drainage
"I was writing to a friend some months ago upon the subject of drainage
in this country, and I am pleased to infer from your letter, that our
opinions are somewhat similar. The climate of England is much more moist
than this, though the amount of rain in many parts of this country, is
much greater than the amount of rain there. It drizzles there more than
it does here. Owing to the high dew point in England, but a small
portion only--that is, comparatively small--of the rain that falls can
be evaporated again; consequently, it remains in the soil until it is
drained off. Here, on the other hand, the clouds pour it down, and the
sun sucks it up right away, so that the perfection of drainage for this
country would be the very reverse, almost, of the drainage in England.
If, instead of leading the water off into the water-veins and streams of
the country, as is there done, we could collect it in pools on the farm,
so as to be used in time of drought for irrigation, then your system of
drainage would be worth untold wealth. Of course, in low grounds, and
all places where the atmosphere does not afford sufficient drainage by
evaporation, the English plan will do very well, and much good may be
done by a treatise which shall enable owners to reclaim or improve such
places."
Indeed, the importance of this subject of drainage, seems all at once to
have found universal acknowledgement throughout our country, not only
from agriculturists, but from philosophers and men of general science.
Emerson, whose eagle glance, piercing beyond the sight of other men,
recognizes in so-called accidental heroes the "Representative men" of
the ages, and in what to others seem but caprices and conventionalisms,
the "Traits" of a nation, yet never overlooks the practical and
every-day wants of man, in a recent address at Concord, Mass., the place
of his residence, thus characteristically alludes to our subject:
"Concord is one of the oldest towns in the country--far on now in its
third century. The Select-men have once in five years perambulated its
bounds, and yet, in this year, a very large quantity of land has been
discovered and added to the agricultural land, and without a murmur of
complaint from any neighbor. By drainage, we have gone to the subsoil,
and we have a Concord under Concord, a Middlesex under Middlesex, and a
basement-story of Massachusetts more valuable than all the
superstructure. Tiles are political economists. They are so many
Young-Americans announcing a better era, and a day of fat things."
John H. Klippart, Esq., the learned Secretary of the Ohio Board of
Agriculture, expresses his opinion upon the importance of our subject in
his own State, in this emphatic language:
"The agriculture of Ohio can make no farther marked progress until a
good system of under-drainage has been adopted."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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