450 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Fig. 2. "Tima," ok Maoki Hoe. 



Europe. Tradition in south Sweden points to waste pieces of once- 

 tilled land in the forests and wilds as having been the fields of the old 



" hackers," and within a generation 

 there was still to he seen in use on 

 forest farms the " hack " itself (Fig, 

 3), made of a stake of spruce -fir, 

 with, at the lower end, a stout pro- 

 jecting branch cut short and point- 

 ed ( Hylten-Cavallius, " Warend och 

 Wirdarne," j)art ii, p. 110 ; i, p. 43). 

 Even among native tribes of Amer- 

 ica a more artificial hoe than this 

 was found in use. Thus the hoe used by the North American women 

 in preparing the soil for planting maize, after the old stalks had been 

 burned, is described as a bent piece of wood, three fingers wide, fixed 

 to a long handle (see Charlevoix, " Nouvelle France," Letter 23 ; Lafi- 

 tau, " Mceurs des Sauvages Ameriquains," vol. ii, p. 76, and Plate 7). 

 (I do not venture to copy the hoe shown in this plate : a mere fancy 

 picture.) In other North American tribes the women hoed Avith a 

 shoulder-blade of an elk or buffalo, or a piece of the shell of a tor- 

 toise fixed to a straight handle (see Loskiel, " Mission of the United 

 Brethren in North America," p. 66 ; Catlin, " American Indians," vol. 

 i, p. 121). From this stage we come up to implements with metal 



':::s ^c^ 



^^ 



Fig. 3. Swedish " Hack." 



blades, such as the Caffre axe, which, by turning the blade in the 

 handle, becomes an implement for hoeing (Lane Fox, " Lectures on 

 Primitive Warfare," No. 2, p. 10). The heavy-bladed Indian hoe 

 (Sanskrit, kudddla), called koddly in Malabar (Klemm, " Culturwissen- 

 schaft," part ii, p. 123), which is shown in Fig. 4, is one example 

 of the iron-bladed hoe, of clumsy and ancient type. The modern 

 varieties of the hoe need no detailed description here. 



That the primitive plow was a hoe dragged through the ground to 

 form a continuous furrow, is seen from the very structure of early 

 plows, and was accepted as obvious by Ginzrot (" Wagen und Fahr- 

 werke der Griechen und Homer," vol. i, and Klemra, " Culturwissen- 

 schaft," part ii, p. 78). The evidence of the transitions through which 

 agricultural implements have passed in Sweden during the last ten 

 centuries or so, which was unknown to these writers, is strongly con- 

 firmatory of the same view. It appears that the fir-tree hack (Fig. 3) 

 was followed by a heavier wooden implement of similar shape, which 



