cost less than
one-half the expense of drainage with stones, and be incomparably more
satisfactory in the end.

CHAPTER XI.

DRAINING IMPLEMENTS.

Unreasonable Expectations about Draining Tools.--Levelling
Instruments; Guessing not Accurate.--Level by a Square.--Spirit
Level.--Span, or A Level.--Grading by
Lines.--Boning-rod.--Challoner's Drain Level.--Spades and
Shovels.--Long-handled Shovel.--Irish Spade, Description and
Cut.--Bottoming Tools.--Narrow Spades.--English Bottoming
Tools.--Pipe-layer.--Pipe-laying Illustrated.--Pick-axes.--Drain
Gauge.--Drain Plows, and Ditch-Diggers.--Fowler's Drain
Plow.--Pratt's Ditch-Digger.--McEwan's Drain Plow.--Routt's Drain
Plow.

It seems to be a characteristic of Americans, to be dissatisfied with
every recent improvement in art or science, and the greater the step in
advance of former times, the more captious and critical do we become.
There is many a good lady, who cannot tolerate a sewing-machine,
although she knows it will do the work of ten seamstresses, because it
will not sew on buttons and work buttonholes! Most of us are very much
out of temper with the magnetic telegraph, just now, because it does not
bring us the Court news from England every morning before breakfast,
though we have hourly dispatches from Washington, New Orleans, and St.
Louis; and, returning to our _moutons_, everybody is finding fault with
us just now, because we cannot tell them of some universal,
all-penetrating, cheap, strong, simple, enduring little implement, by
means of which any kind of a laborer, Scotch, Irish, or Yankee, may
conveniently open all kinds of drains in all kinds of land, whether
sand, hard-pan, gravel, or clay.

Having personally inquired and examined, touching draining tools in
England, and having been solicited by an extensive agricultural
implement house in Boston, to furnish them a list and description of a
complete set of draining tools, and feeling the obligation which seemed
to be imposed on us, to know all about this matter, we wrote to Mr.
Denton, one of the first draining engineers in the world, to send us a
list, with drawings and descriptions of such implements as he finds most
useful, or, if more convenient the implements themselves.

Mr. Denton kindly replied to our inquiry, and his answer may be taken as
the best evidence upon this point. He says:

"As to tools, it is the same with them as