AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS AND MACHINES. 397 
is adjusted to any desired position by means of the supporting bar ¢; 
which passes through a screw clamp bin the beam A. 
_Fig. 3, Plate 15, represents a root-cutter and plow-lifter. The au 
of this inven tion is to furnish a means by which the roots may be cut, 
as the plow is lifted over them, and to separate the trash that may be 
on the ground in front of the plow. G is the cutter, the forward end of 
which is curved downward and rearward, so that its lower end may rest 
against the plow-point F. The rear part of the cutter G extends back 
with a slight upward inclination, and is attached to the standard C, and 
te the rear part of the beam A. The convex edge of the cutter upon 
the mold-board side is beveled off, leaving the land-side of the cutter 
straight, and in a line with the land-side of the plow. 
CULTIVATORS. 
Next to the plow in importance to the farmer is, undoubtedly, the 
cultivator, an implement that has taken the place of the old-fashioned 
hand-hoe in the cultivation of such plants as are growninrows. By the 
use of this implement, a man with a span of horses is able to do the 
work of ten or fifteen men operating with the hand-hoe, especially in 
the cultivation of maize or Indian corn. 
The efforts at improvement in this machine have been chiefly directed, 
of late years, to mere modifications, with a view of rendering it more 
simple and effective. Some of these machines possess a complicated 
structure, and are, consequently, costly, besides being liable to get out 
of repair. For durability and effective use, it is important that they 
should be made of the fewest number of parts consistent with strength 
and their automatic character. 
Those most generally in use at the present day consist essentially of a 
rectangular frame mounted on wheels, and provided with a driver’s seat, 
and have two gangs of shares, the inner shares of each gang having a 
lateral movement, subject to the control of the operator, to accommo- 
date the sinuosities of the rows of plants. Most of these machines at 
the present time are provided with guards upon the inner sides of the 
inner shares to protect the young plants from being covered by the 
loose, falling soil. 
- Cultiv vators, or horse-hoes, as they were called by English farmers, were 
in use in England in the very beginning of the eighteenth century. 
They were used in the cultivation of various kinds of crops planted in 
rows or drills, especiaily the small cereals, as wheat, barley, and oats, 
leguminous plants and succulent roots. These being planted or sown 
in “drills, at equal distances from six to twelve inches apart, by the use 
of this machine a number of rows could be cultivated at a time by hav- 
ing a share so adjusted as to fit the interval between the rows. The 
horse-hoe of that period possessed all the essential elements of the 
straddle-row cultivator of this day and country, and the changes it has 
undergone on this side of the Atlantic have simply adapted it to the 
cultivation of maize or Indian corn. 
Jethro Tull, an English farmer who flourished in the early part of the 
last century, may justiy be called the pioneer in the construction and use 
of this class of implements. The following extract from the Complete 
Farmer, published in London, England, in 1807, will serve to give a 
very correct idea of the state of the art at the period referred to: 
Horst-Hor, a very powerful tool of the hoe kind, which is much employed in the 
cultivation of crops that are sown or planted in the drill or row method, with suffi- 
ciently large intervals. These, like the hand sort, are of very different forms and con- 
structions, “aecording to the uses for which they are designed ; and likewise vary much 
