72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



• 



it. In those dry seasons, it did tolerably well ; but after all, there 15 

 no gain in using it. I have one of Delano's horse rakes, which is 

 used with wheels. I consider it a great improvement over the revolver 

 — certainly, the greatest improvement among my farming utensils." 



FEOir S. M'. COBUKX, BLOOMFIELD. 



" Xew implements, to some extent, are being constantly introduced 

 into our farm management, and out of them all, much advantage will 

 be derived. The cast iron plough has long since entirely taken the place 

 of the old wooden plough with iron plates nailed on to its moldboard. 

 The cast iron beam has been a failure here, on our rocky soil, by its 

 liability to break, though that pattern of plough makes good work on 

 easy land, and for shoal ploughing, say six inches. The harrow is an 

 instrument every farmer manufactures himself, to suit his own taste, 

 but I do not think it has attained a perfection proportionate to its im- 

 portance as an agricultural implement, or to its great number of man- 

 ufacturers. The old fashioned crotch, the double crotch, and the 

 square harrow in some form, make up the principal patterns in this im- 

 plement. They divide the ground very coarsely, and by the teeth setting 

 little back, serve to pack the soil rather than lighten it, as they should. 

 I have had in use, for more than six years, a harrow, the idea of which 

 I took from a cut of one of the great variety of patterns used in Mas- 

 sachusetts, though I made some variations which I think useful. To 

 make one, take six pieces of elm joist, as that timber is both light and 

 tough, three and a half or four inches square, and about six feet long, two 

 of them beins: eight inches longer than the rest. Place three of them 

 even at one end, one of the long ones in the middle, and twelve inches 

 apart from centre to centre ; about twelve inches from the ends of the 

 joists, also in the middle, mortise and put through an inch by three incli 

 support, letting the end run through on one side of the three pieces, about 

 six inches. Form and frame together three more pieces in like manner, 

 and lay them alongside, about one foot apart, with ends of the cross slats 

 making bearings together, and one long end of the joist being at one 

 end, the other at the other end. Confine these two sides together by 

 two heavy, square, and well fitted iron rods, running through at each 

 end of two of the joists, with a nut on the end, and a flexible joint in 

 the middle, in a line with the long ends of the connecting slats. Fit a 

 clevis to each of the long joists ; now mark for a tooth in each long 

 end just back of the clevis ; and as this harrow is calculated for twenty- 

 four teeth, there are twenty-two more to be inserted ; if they are so 

 arranged as to have no two of them follow each other in the same cut, 

 they will make twenty-one spaces from outside to outside. Divide, 

 then, this whole distance, from outside to outside, into twenty-one 



