4 

 FARM IMPLEMENTS. 75 



For lifting and removing stones, we have found nothing equal 

 to the Stone Lifter, as shown in the adjoining figure. Fi<j. 24. 



This machine is easier to manage and less wearing upon the 

 team than the two-wheel machine, while the double gearing at 

 liie top gives it great power. We have seen a lad of fifteen 

 lift a stone of three tons from its natural bed with this power- 

 ful machine, while a single yoke of cattle was sufficient to 

 move it off to be dumped into the foundation of a wall or else- 

 where. The two-wheeled lifters, when heavily loaded and 

 moving over uneven surfaces, cause unnecessary wear and tear 

 upon the cattle. There is no patent npon this arrangement 

 The castings are easily made, and the wheels and wood work 

 can be constructed by any wheelwright or carpenter. 



T!ie next operation in the way of preparing the soil for cul- 

 I tivation is that of drainage, which lies at the very foundation 

 ' of all good husbandry on many classes of soils which are sub- 

 jected to tillage. The importance of drainage, the various 

 processes b}' which it is to be effected, the implements required, 

 are fully explained in the. chapter devoted to the subject. 



Plows and Plowing. — We come now to the most im- 

 portant of all the operations of the farm, that of plowing, 

 and here it is that the earliest improvements of modern 

 agricultural mechanics have been displayed. The Plow has 

 probably passed through more changes and transformations 

 than any other implement of the farm. It has, from tlie first 

 dawn of civilization, been regarded as the emblem, the great 

 central figure and type of agriculture, and, indeed, of civiliza- 

 tion itself. The fact that the anci':Mits had many forms of the 

 plow, adapted to a great variety of uses, shows the estima 

 tion in which it was held as compared with all other imple- 

 ments, for simple and rude as its construction must have been, 

 as compared with the higlily finished plows of our own times. 



