128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ill the highest degree available, must be, for obvious reasons, 

 one of the principal aims of a farmer. A thorough mechani- 

 cal treatment of the soil is a most efficient means to promote 

 that aim. 



Mr. BowDlTCH. If you will allow me one moment, I 

 think there is an impression among the people who grow 

 corn that it is impossible to raise a crop free from weeds 

 without using more or less hand-labor. I do not like weeds 

 myself any better than my friend Capt. Moore does ; and yet, 

 for the last few years, I have made it a rule never to alloAv 

 a hand-hoe to go into my cornfield. I should be perfectly 

 willing any time during the season to have my field ex- 

 amined by Capt. ]\Ioore, or anybody else, in regard to cleanli- 

 ness. I never had a cleaner cornfield than I had this last 

 summer ; and I doubt if there was a cleaner cornfield within 

 ten miles from here, including even small patches weeded 

 entirely by hand. I think I cultivate once or twice oftener 

 than Dr. Sturtevant, and this year I got a new horse-hoe. 

 It is made with three disks on each side, in the same style as 

 a Randall harrow, with wheels on each side, so arranged that 

 they can be set at any angle. You can accomplish with this 

 hoe what Mr. Hersey says he likes to do. By reversing the 

 wheels, you can throw the earth away to warm the roots, or 

 you can ride over corn eighteen inches high. I think that 

 helped me this year to raise the cleanest field I ever had. I 

 was able to throw the earth over any young weed that came 

 up between my plants. I plant in drills, the same way that 

 Dr. Sturtevant does. It seems to me that that is one great 

 point in regard to the question of our ability to raise corn 

 profitably here in the East, to be able to say you can do it 

 entirely by horse-power, and have the field as clean as it can 

 be kept by hand-culture. 



Question. Does the driver ride ? 



Mr. BowDiTCH. He does. He takes a pair of horses, 

 and straddles the end of the pole ; and in that way, by his 

 own weight, makes the disks go down deeper or less deep. 



Question. Do you plant your corn with a machine ? 



Mr. BowDiTCH. I plant it with a Western planter, called 

 the " Climax Planter." This machine plants just an acre an 

 hour. I planted this field which the doctor has mentioned 

 in seventeen hours. It dropo in two rows, three feet eight 



