circumstances, but always unmistakable to the
practiced eye. Sometimes it is the broad banner of standing water, or
dark, wet streaks in plowed land, when all should be dry and of even
color; sometimes only a fluttering rag of distress in curling corn, or
wide-cracking clay, or feeble, spindling, shivering grain, which has
survived a precarious winter, on the ice-stilts that have stretched its
crown above a wet soil; sometimes the quarantine flag of rank growth and
dank miasmatic fogs.

To recognize these indications is the first office of the drainer; the
second, to remove the causes from which they arise.

If a rule could be adopted which would cover the varied circumstances of
different soils, it would be somewhat as follows: All lands, of whatever
texture or kind, in which _the spaces between the particles of soil_ are
filled with water, (whether from rain or from springs,) within less than
four feet of the surface of the ground, except during and _immediately_
after heavy rains, require draining.

Of course, the _particles_ of the soil cannot be made dry, nor should they
be; but, although they should be moist themselves, they should be
surrounded with air, not with water. To illustrate this: suppose that
water be poured into a barrel filled with chips of wood until it runs over
at the top. The spaces between the chips will be filled with water, and
the chips themselves will absorb enough to become thoroughly wet;--this
represents the worst condition of a wet soil. If an opening be made at the
bottom of the barrel, the water which fills the spaces between the chips
will be drawn off, and its place will be taken by air, while the chips
themselves will remain wet from the water which they hold by absorption. A
drain at the bottom of a wet field draws away the water from the free
spaces between its particles, and its place is taken by air, while the
particles hold, by attraction, the moisture necessary to a healthy
condition of the soil.

There are vast areas of land in this country which do not need draining.
The whole range of sands, gravels, light loams and moulds allow water to
pass freely through them, and are sufficiently drained by nature,
_provided_, they are as open at the bottom as throughout the mass. A sieve
filled with gravel will drain perfectly; a basin filled with the same
gravel will not drain at all. More than this, a sieve filled with the
stiffest clay, if not "puddled,"(1) will drain completely,