238 



THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 



THE SPADE. 



" Hurrah for the spade, and a workman to use it I 

 It turns the black glebe into bright shining gold I 

 What could our fathers have done, boys, without it, 

 When the fields lay all bare and the zephyrs blew cold ?" DWIGHT. 



320. Fig. 106 represents a good spade, in one sense, but be- 



FIG. 



107. 



cause it hangs so awkwardly it is worthless. 

 It would be almost impossible to spade with 

 such a tool, because there is no hang to it. 

 The names of the principal parts of the 

 spade are, b, the handle, a, the hilt, c, the 

 stamp or shoulder, e?, the blade. Fig. 107 

 shows a side view of a well-hung spade. 

 It will be discovered that a line cutting the 

 middle of the straight portion of the handle 

 will strike the edge of the blade, as shown 

 by the dotted line, and the upper end of the 

 blade should set back of this line about two 

 inches, in a spade about a foot long. When 

 the blade hangs in such a position that a 

 line cutting the centre of it would be par 

 allel with a line cutting the straight part of 

 the handle, (see Fig. 108, OF SHOVELS,) it 

 will not work easily, because the laborer 

 will be obliged to make an extra effort to 

 prevent a spadeful from slipping off the end 

 SPADB. Q ^e blade. "When a spade has as much 



hang as a well hung shovel, a spader is obliged to reach for 

 ward with the handle so far that the motion is awkward, ineffi 

 cient, and not easy. But when a spade has about as much 

 hang as is shown at Fig. 107, a workman is not obliged to use 

 up any of his energies in an inefficient manner. It is much 

 better to have a spade-handle entirely straight, without any 

 hang at all in a spade, than to have the edge and the blade 

 stand at such an angle as is represented by Fig. 106. A spade 



