How Water Gets Into Tiles

Just lay twenty or thirty rods of tiles nnd make the joints as tight as possible theo let a sircam of water into the tiles and dam t up st the lower end, and ee bow fast tho water will flow out from the joints between the tiles. Now, when tho tiles art) laid in the ground, and they aro surrounded with water, the water will rush into the tiles throueh the joints, nearly or quito as fast as the water in tbc other case would flow out of ihem. Uut perhaps you mean to sk how tho wa!er in the land geta to the underdrain. In snndy or gravelly land it gradually soaks tbrough the particles of soil for Beveral rods on eaeh eide of ihe drain. But to niany people it is a mystery how water eau soak thrnugh a tenacious clay three or four feet deep to the tiles. Wet cla as it dries, contracts, and seame or pores are formed. You wül observe this on a piece of wet olay land. In tbe dry wcather of Summer it splits open uto cracks, not unfrequently an inch wide. Well, whon you put tiles into such a soil, tho water drainsaway for a fa w incbes on the bottom and sides of the ditch, and as tbe land becomes dry it cracks open, and the water from tho adjoining land flows into these craoks and through tbem to the tiles. As more land dries, more cracks are formed, and so on until the wholo soil, if the drains are sufliuiontly numerous, becomes full of these small fissures. When thege are once formed they will slways continue open, and