The Cincinnatus Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 Excerpt: ...is, very properly, attracting the attention of land-holders in our country. There has been much discussion with regard to the depth at which drains should be laid, and the distance they should be from each other. As an exposition of the principles involved in these points, and as a general illustration of the philosophy of drainage, the following extract from an editorial article in the (London) Farmers' Magazine, is worthy of special attention: We are sometimes told that farmers ought to leave their habits and prejudices at home, and come to the discussion of an agricultural subject, exactly as a lobster would if divested of its shell. Let us see how much a meeting conducted on such terms would be worth. The cultivation of a dark, strong, homogeneous clay, affected entirely by water on its way from the heavens downward to the sea, and where the principle has been to remove this as quickly as could be effected by open parallel furrows on the" surface, a few feet distance only apart, and intersected by parallel open drains, in a cross direction, some twenty or thirty yards asunder. Such a system with one man is the only drainage that he requires to effect his object. The cultivator from another district--probably the colitic--where the soil is a dark tenacious clay at the top, and an open, porous, or absorbent soil below, is satisfied with any depth of drain, provided it is deep enough to penetrate the retentive soil lying above, so as to give the water free admission to the porous subsoil below. Another, who lives in a district of greatly undulating surface--with a porous subsoil on extensive or dislocated portions, and intersected at all angles with beds of tenacious clay lying at all depths and thickness--the porous portion supplied and overcharged w...