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Lord Wharncliffe, with a view to effect adequate drainage at less expense than is usual in thorough drainage, has adopted upon his estate a sort of compromise system, which he has brought to the notice of the public in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society.

Upon Fontenelle's idea, that "mankind only settle into the right course after passing through and exhausting all the varieties of error," it is well to advise our readers of this particular form of error also—to show that it has already been tried—so that no patent of invention can be claimed upon it by those perverse persons who are not satisfied without constant change, and who seem to imagine that the ten commandments might be improved by a new edition.

Lord Wharncliffe states his principles as follows, and calls his method the combined system of deep and shallow drainage:

"In order to secure the full effect of thorough drainage in clays, it is necessary that there should be not only well-laid conduits for the water which reaches them, but also subsidiary passages opened through the substance of the close subsoil, by means of atmospheric heat, and the contraction which ensues from it. The cracks and fissures which result from this action, are reckoned upon as a certain and essential part of the process.

"To give efficiency, therefore, to a system of deep drains beneath a stiff clay, these natural channels are required. To produce them, there must be a continued action of heat and evaporation. If we draw off effectually and constantly the bottom water from beneath the clay and from its substance, as far as it admits of percolation, and by some other means provide a vent for the upper water, which needs no more than this facility to run freely, there seems good reason to suppose that the object may be completely attained, and that we shall remove the moisture from both portions as effectually as its quantity and the substance will permit. Acting upon this view, then, after due consideration, I determined to combine with the fundamental four-feet drains a system of auxiliary ones of much less depth, which should do their work above, and contribute their share to the wholesome discharge, while the under-current from their more subterranean neighbors should be steadily performing their more difficult duty.

"I accomplished this, by placing my four-feet drains at a distance of from eighteen to twenty yards apart, and then leading others into them, sunk only to about two feet beneath the surface (which appeared, upon consideration, to be sufficiently below any conceivable depth of cultivation), and laying these at a distance from each other of eight yards. These latter are laid at an acute angle with the main-drains, and at their mouths are either gradually sloped downwards to the lower level, or have a few loose stones placed in the same intervals between the two, sufficient to ensure the perpendicular descent of the upper stream through that space, which can never exceed, or, indeed, strictly equal, the additional two feet."

There are two reasons why this mode of drainage cannot be adopted in the northern part of the United States.

First: The two-foot drains would be liable to be frozen up solid, every winter.

Secondly: The subsoil plow, now coming into use among our best cultivators, runs to so great a depth as to be likely to entirely destroy two-foot drains at the first operation, even if it were not intended to run the sub-soiler to a greater general depth than eighteen inches. Any one who has had experience in holding a subsoil-plow, must know that it is an implement somewhat unmanageable, and liable to plunge deep into soft spots like the covering over drains; so that no skill or care could render its use safe over two-foot drains.

The history of drainage in America, is soon given. It begins here, as it must begin everywhere, when practiced as a general system, with the introduction of tiles.

In 1835, Mr. John Johnston, of Seneca County, New York, a Scotchman by birth, imported from Scotland patterns of drain-tiles, and caused them to be made by hand-labor, and set the example of their use on his own farm. The effects of Mr. Johnston's operations were so striking, that in 1848, John Delafield, Esq., for a long time President of the Seneca County Agricultural Society, imported from England one of Scragg's Patent Tile machines. From that time, tile-draining in that county, and in the neighboring counties, has been diligently and profitably pursued. Several interesting statements of successful experiments by Mr. Johnston, Mr. Delafield, Mr. Theron G. Yeomans of Wayne County, and others, have been published, from time to time, in the "New York Transactions." Indeed, most of our information of experimental draining in this country, has come from that quarter.

Mr. Johnston, for more than twenty years, has made himself useful to the country, and at the same time gained a wide reputation for himself, by occasional publications on the subject of drainage.

In addition to this, his practical knowledge of agriculture, and especially of the subject of drainage, has gained for him a competence for his declining years. In this we rejoice; and trust that in these, his latter years, he may be made ever to feel, that even they among us of the friends of agriculture who have not known him personally, are not unmindful of their obligations to him as the leader of a most beneficent enterprise.

Tile-works have since been established at various places in New York, at several places in Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, and many other States. The first drain-tiles used in New-Hampshire, were brought from Albany, in 1854, by Mr. William Conner, and used on his farm in Exeter, that year; and the following year, the writer brought some from Albany, and laid them on his farm, in the same town.

In 1857, tile-works were put in operation at Exeter; and some 40,000 tiles were made that year.

The horse-shoe tiles, we understand, have been generally used in New York. At Albany, and in Massachusetts, the sole-tile has been of late years preferred. We cannot learn that cylindrical pipes have ever been manufactured in this country until the Summer of 1858 when the engineers of the New York Central Park procured them to be made, and laid them, with collars, in their drainage-works there. This is believed to be the first practical introduction into this country of round pipes and collars, which are regarded in England as the most perfect means of drainage.

Experiments all over the country, in reclaiming bog-meadows, and in draining wet lands with drains of stone and wood, have been attempted, with various success.

Those attempts we regard as merely efforts in the right direction, and rather as evidence of a general conviction of the want, by the American farmer, of a cheap and efficient mode of drainage, than as an introduction of a system of thorough drainage; for—as we think will appear in the course of this work—no system of drainage can be made sufficiently cheap and efficient for general adoption, with other materials than drain-tiles.