composed of a beam or sill, horizontal in position, and a coulter seven feet long at the rear end of the beam, and perpendicular to it a spirit level attached to the beam, aids in regulating. The coulter can be run anywhere from one to five feet deep. The front end of the beam is provided with a mud or stone boat to prevent sinking in the mud, and with a jack screw for regulating on uneven ground. Attached to it, and following the mole, is a carrier 200 feet long, made concave in form. On this the tile are laid and carried into the ground. A start is made at an open ditch or hole of required depth; when the carrier is drawn in full length a hole is dug just back of the coulter, two by three feet, down to the tile, a stop placed in front of the tile, the machine is started which draws the carrier from under the tile, when it is again located as before, and so on. Different sized moles are used according to the size of the tile to be laid. Any one can easily count up the advantages of this mode of laying tile, provided the machine can do the work it is claimed to do, and of this there seems to be no question, if we may believe the testimony of those who have seen it in operation.

DRAINAGE LAWS.

The following by Senator Whiting, of Bureau county, was read by the Secretary:

Illinois is a good State as nature made her, and drainage is destined to add wealth almost inestimable. Drainage enterprises are everywhere seen—in extent from the small work beginning and ending in the same field, to the levees of Sny Carte, and the canal-like channels through the Winnebago swamps. Drainage is naturally divided into two classes:

1. Individual drainage, where the land-owner has his own outlet independent of others.

2. Combined drainage where one can not drain without joining with others.

The smallest of these combined works is where two only are concerned. The Hickory Creek ditch now in progress in Bureau and Henry counties is thirteen miles long, has a district of about 15,000 acres, owned by over seventy-five persons. This combined drainage partakes of the nature of public works. For this class the constitution has been twice amended, and many elaborate laws have been enacted. These laws have had their vicissitudes, and are not yet free from complications. The first drainage legislation commenced forty years ago, by a special act, to drain some wet lands near Chicago. In 1859 two special acts were passed for lands on the American bottoms. In 1865 a general act was passed. All these enactments were under the constitution of 1848 which was silent on drainage, and the courts annulled most of these as unconstitutional. In 1870 the new constitution was framed containing a brief provision on drainage. The late Mr. Browning, a leading member of that convention, drafted a drainage bill which was enacted into a law without change. Large enterprises were organized and got well started; but again some complaining person appealed to the courts, and this law too, was declared too big for the constitution. The constitution was then enlarged to meet if possible, the views of the court. Two elaborate laws on the main question were passed in 1879, and these with several amendments since made rest undisturbed on the statutes. One of these is generally known as the "levee law," and the other as the "farm drainage act." They cover nearly the same subject matter, and were passed to compromise conflicting views. These laws relate to "combined drainage." "Individual drainage" was not discussed. As the law does not undertake to define how deep you may plow or what crop you shall raise, so it was thought unnecessary to make any provisions about the drainage of your own land.

Court Decision.—To the public surprise the Appellate court at Ottawa in two decisions pronounced individual drainage unlawful. As this decision is notable, and the subject of controversy, its history should be known. In 1876, Mr. C. Pilgrim, of Bureau county, laid about sixty rods of two-inch tile up a slight depression in his corn-field, discharging the same under a box culvert in the public road. This depression continued into a pasture field of Mr. J. H. Mellor, of Stark county, about eighteen rods to a running stream. Mr. Mellor sued Mr. Pilgrim for trespass, and the case was twice tried successively in the circuit courts of Stark and Bureau counties. The juries each time decided for Mr. Pilgrim, but the Appellate court each time reversed the decision; and finally worried Mr. Pilgrim into yielding to a judgment of one cent damages. The material part of that decision is as follows:

Mellor vs. Pilgrim.—"The appellant had the right to own and possess his land free from the increased burden arising from receiving the surface water from the land of appellee through artificial channels made by appellee, for the purpose of carrying the surface water therefrom more rapidly than the same would naturally flow; and the appellant having such right for any invasion thereof the law gives him an action. * * * If, as we have seen, the appellee by making the drain in question collected the surface water upon his own land and discharged the same upon the lands of the appellant in increased quantity and in a different manner than the same would naturally run, the act was unlawful because of its consequences, and the subjecting of appellant's lands to such increased and different burden than would otherwise attach to it, was an invasion of appellant's rights from which the law implies damages, and in such case proof of the wrongful act entitles the plaintiff to recover nominal damages at least."

Under this decision it is not easy to see how a man can lawfully cut a rod of ditch or lay tile on his own land, unless he can contrive some way to stop the flow of water.

1. The lower man may recover without proving that he is damaged because to drain is "wrongful."

2. Such drainage being a continuing trespass, subjects the perpetrator to never ending law suits and foredoomed defeats.

3. The lower man may forbid you to drain, or exact such tribute as he may dictate.

4. As the first man below must be consulted, why not the second, and how far this side of the Gulf is the limit of this trespass?

Here, as I have elsewhere, I challenge this as bad law. It reverses the order of nature, as well as custom, and can not be endured as the public policy of Illinois. Let us contemplate the exact opposite principle. "A land owner may drain his land for agricultural purposes by tile or open ditch, in the line of natural drainage, into any natural outlet on his own land or into any drainage depression leading to some natural outlet."

This proposition is generally regarded as self evident, but out of respect to the court, let us give some of the considerations on which it rests:

1. Improved agriculture is an element in civilization.

2. Drainage belongs to good agriculture, is extensively practiced and must often precede the plow.

3. The surplus water can not be stored or annihilated, and the course of drainage is indicated, in most places determined by nature, in the drainage depressions which are nature's outlets.

4. The law of gravity, with or without man's work, is constant and active in moving the waters to the lower level. The ditcher's art is to remove the obstacles to a freer flow.

5. Excessive water is a foe to agriculture; and for the general good it should be collected into channels, and as speedily as possible passed along on its inevitable journey.

Objections answered.—It is said to be a universal law maxim, "that you may use your own as you will, but not to the detriment of your neighbor," and that this principle forbids this kind of drainage. This maxim may be general, but it is not universal. My neighbor may have built his house and other domestic arrangements in the lee of a natural grove of timber on my land. The removal of this grove may be a real grievance by giving the wind