was not my fault that some of those stones were set nearly upright, so as to veneer the brook rather than thoroughly constrain it: hence, some of the stones, undermined by strong currents, were pitched forward into the brook by high Spring freshets, so as to require resetting more carefully. This was a mistake, but, not one of _My Blunders._--These, the natural results of inexperience and haste, were very grave. Not only had I had no real experience in draining when I began, but I could hire no foreman who know much more of it than I did. I ought to have begun by securing an ample and sure fall where the water left my land, and next cut down the brooklet or open ditch into which I intended to drain to the lowest practicable point--so low, at least, that no drain running into it should ever be troubled with back-water. Nothing can be more useless than a drain in which water stagnates, choking it with mud. Then I should have bought hundreds of Hemlock or other cheap boards, slit them to a width of four or five inches, and, having opened the needed drains, laid these in the bottom and the tile thereupon, taking care to _break joint_, by covering the meeting ends of two boards with the middle of a tile. Laying tile in the soft mud of a bog, with nothing beneath to prevent their sinking, is simply throwing away labor and money. I cannot wonder that tile-draining seems to many a humbug, seeing that so many tile are laid so that they can never do any good. Having, by successive purchases, become owner of fully half of this swamp, and by repeated blunders discovered that making stone drains in a bog, while it is a capital mode of getting rid of the stone, is no way at all to dry the soil, I closed my series of experiments two years since by carefully relaying my generally useless tile on good strips of board, sinking them just as deep as I could persuade the water to run off freely, and, instead of allowing them to discharge into a brooklet or open ditch, connecting each with a covered main of four to six-inch tile; these mains discharging into the running brook which drains all my farm and three or four of those above it just where it runs swiftly off from my land. If a thaw or heavy rain swells the brook (as it sometimes will) so that it rises above my outlet aforesaid, the strong current formed by the concentration of the clear contents of so many drains will not allow the muddy water of the brook to back into it so many as three feet at most; and any mud or sediment that may be deposited there will be swept out clean whenever the brook shall have fallen to the drainage level. For this and similar excellent devices, I am indebted to the capital engineering and thorough execution of Messrs. Chickering & Gall, whose work on my place has seldom required mending, and never called for reconstruction.