﻿THE TUGDA, OR RICE PLANTER, OF THE COYUNOS, 

 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



By E. Y. .MILLER 



Those who easily associate the name of Richard I. Gatling with 

 the rapid-firing gun have not all learned that he was also the in- 

 ventor of the many-pointed seed-drill. Gatling was born on the 

 shores of Albermarle sound, North Carolina, and in his early youth 

 turned his attention to the improvement of things necessary to the 

 daily occupations of the people there. Observing the wearisome 

 method of planting rice, the man walking along a row in the field, 

 dropping the grains through a small hole in the handle of a gourd, 

 he set to work to devise a better way of doing it. He turned the 

 gourd into a cylindrical sheet-iron drill-hoe, fastened a dozen of 

 these in a frame, to which he added wheels, shafts for a mule, 

 and a seat for the driver. By means of mechanical attachments to 

 the wheels, the flow of seeds was regulated as the apparatus was 

 driven along. 



It was my pleasure to discover the most primitive forerunner of 

 this device. Each separate shovel-point is worked by a man, as 

 will be seen in plate li. It is hollow, but no seed pipe runs through 

 it. The women follow on after the separate drillers. In fact, 

 Gatlin combines a twenty-man power and twenty-woman power 

 Philippine agricultural operation into a single device. 



The Coyunos occupy the little group of islands called the Cuyo 

 archipelago, in the province of Calamianes, Philippine islands. 

 According to A. Marche they appear to be Christianized Tagbanuas. 

 This group of islands, where the tugda is used, is very much over- 

 populated. All the available soil is under cultivation, so that there 

 is no sod land. The tugda cannot be used in sod or soft ground. 

 During the latter part of the dry season, April and May, the rice 

 land is cleared of all vegetation by cutting the weeds and other plants 

 close to the ground with a short working bolo. This vegetation is 

 collected in piles and burned, leaving the ground bare and hard. No 

 further cultivation is attempted. When the first rain comes, some 

 time in June, the people gather in parties of ten to fifty to plant the 

 rice. The men, each of whom is equipped with a tugda, will work- 

 in a line. The force of the fall of the tugda causes the point to 



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