rs
will increase, and the duration of the usefulness of the drains will
diminish.

Drains which are permanently well made, and which will, practically, last
for all time, may be regarded as a good investment, the increased crop of
each year, paying a good interest on the money that they cost, and the
money being still represented by the undiminished value of the
improvement. In such a case the draining of the land may be said to cost,
not $50 per acre,--but the interest on $50 each year. The original amount
is well invested, and brings its yearly dividend as surely as though it
were represented by a five-twenty bond.

With badly constructed drains, on the other hand, the case is quite
different. In buying land which is subject to no loss in quantity or
quality, the farmer considers, not so much the actual cost, as the
relation between the yearly interest on the cost, and the yearly profit on
the crop,--knowing that, a hundred years hence, the land will still be
worth his money.

But if the land were bounded on one side by a river which yearly
encroached some feet on its bank, leaving the field a little smaller after
each freshet; or if, every spring, some rods square of its surface were
sure to be covered three feet deep with stones and sand, so that the
actual value of the property became every year less, the purchaser would
compare the yearly value of the crops, not only with the interest on the
price, but, in addition to this, with so much of the prime value as yearly
disappears with the destruction of the land.

It is exactly so with the question of the cost of drainage. If the work is
insecurely done, and is liable, in five years or in fifty, to become
worthless; the increase of the crops resulting from it, must not only
cover the yearly interest on the cost, but the yearly depreciation as
well. Therefore what may seem at the time of doing the work to be
cheapness, is really the greatest extravagance. It is like building a
brick wall with clay for mortar. The bricks and the workmanship cost full
price, and the small saving on the mortar will topple the wall over in a
few years, while, if well cemented, it would have lasted for centuries.
The cutting and filling of the ditches, and the purchase and
transportation of the tiles, will cost the same in every case, and these
constitute the chief cost; if the proper care in grading, tile-laying and
covering, and in making outlets be stingily withheld,--saving, perhaps