3 o 4 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



land 24 feet wide prepared and planted with a celerity never 

 before approached. Two or three men and an outfit of this 

 character regularly plow and put in from twenty-five to thirty 

 acres a day. 



When the grain is ripe the reapers are operated in the same 

 manner, a swath of 20 to 26 feet being cut as the engine pro- 

 ceeds. Automatic rakes gather up the fall, and at one opera- 

 tion the wheat is threshed and sacked, and, following the 

 moving mill, is a trail of sacked wheat ready for the market. 



Elsewhere throughout the country farming implements are 

 everywhere in evidence. They are, of course, not so mas- 

 sive as upon the bonanza farms above alluded to, but they are 

 equally efficient and hardly less wonderful. The corn 

 planter drawn by horses has displaced the old method of hand 

 dropping and hoe covering, the seed now being planted with 

 great rapidity and at such regular intervals that the rows may 

 be cultivated in either direction with equal facility, the cul- 

 tivation itself being done by a riding plow, which more effect- 

 ually shields the young plants than was done by any farm 

 hand working with the old-fashioned hoe. The combination 

 cutter and binder is driven into the field when the corn is 

 ripe, and in one hour does the work which formerly re- 

 quired a day for one man to perform with the old corn knife. 

 The husking peg is laid aside and the ears, perhaps stalks 

 and all, are thrown into a hopper or fed into a devouring 

 maw, whence disappearing, the husks are removed from the 

 ears in a trice and the remainder of the plant stalk leaves 

 and husks are torn and cut into fodder. The frying pan 

 handle and the shovel blade no longer play a part in the 

 shelling, neither are the grains wrenched off by the pressure 

 and torque of a cob dextrously rubbed against the yellow ear. 



