and by hand, are additional reasons why the English fields should
present a uniform appearance, and why any inequalities should be fairly
referable to the condition of the soil.

Upon a crop of Indian corn, the cold water lurking below soon places its
unmistakable mark. The blade comes up yellow and feeble. It takes
courage in a few days of bright sunshine in June, and tries to look
hopeful, but a shower or an east wind again checks it. It had already
more trouble than it could bear, and turns pale again. Tropical July and
August induce it to throw up a feeble stalk, and to attempt to spindle
and silk, like other corn. It goes through all the forms of vegetation,
and yields at last a single nubbin for the pig. Indian corn must have
land that is dry in Summer, or it cannot repay the labor of cultivation.

Careful attention to the subject will soon teach any farmer what parts
of his land are injured by too much water; and having determined that,
the next question should be, whether the improvement of it by drainage
will justify the cost of the operation.

WILL IT PAY?

Drainage is a permanent investment. It is not an operation like the
application of manure, which we should expect to see returned in the
form of salable crops in one or two years, or ten at most, nor like the
labor applied in cultivating an annual crop. The question is not whether
drainage will pay in one or two years, but will it pay in the long run?
Will it, when completed, return to the farmer a fair rate of interest
for the money expended? Will it be more profitable, on the whole, than
an investment in bank or railway shares, or the purchase of Western
lands? Or, to put the question in the form in which an English
land-owner would put it, will the rent of the land improved by drainage,
be permanently increased enough to pay a fair interest on the cost of
the improvement?

Let us bring out this idea clearly to the American farmer by a familiar
illustration. Your field is worth to you now one hundred dollars an
acre. It pays you, in a series of years, through a rotation of planting,
sowing, and grass, a nett profit of six dollars an acre, above all
expenses of cultivation and care.

Suppose, now, it will cost one-third of a hundred dollars an acre to
drain it, and you expend on each three acres one hundred dollars, what
must the increase of your crops be, to make this a fair investment? Had
you expended the hundred dollars in _labor_, to produce