NEW MACHINERY. 307 



By this means hardly six bushels could be shelled by one 

 man in a day. Now either by means of his own machine 

 or one surely to be found in his neighborhood it is shelled at 

 the rate of a bushel a minute, the cobs being carried to a 

 heap or dumped into his wagon while the grain streams into 

 the waiting sacks. 



Mowers, tedders, rakes and stackers have revolutionized the 

 making of hay. Formerly it required the work of one man 

 for eleven hours to cut and cure a ton of hay. Now the 

 same work is done by one man in I hour and 39 

 minutes. Potato-managing machinery of all kinds cutters, 

 planters, diggers ; feed preparing machinery in great variety 

 choppers-, grinders ; manure spreaders, ditch diggers these 

 are but a few of the labor-saving devices now to be found 

 upon the farm. There is hardly a feature of farm life that 

 has not been profoundly modified by the introduction of some 

 implement or machine. 



It is the use of machinery that is rendering the culture of 

 rice in this country the wonder of the world. A comparison 

 of the number of days' work required to produce an acre of 

 rice in the regions where it has been cultivated for untold 

 centuries, and in the United States, where the industry has 

 only recently been entered upon with the characteristic vigor 

 of our people and with a view to great profits, is both in- 

 teresting and instructive. In Bengal it requires the labor 

 of one man 80 days and the use of a yoke of oxen 20 days 

 to produce an acre of rice ; in Japan, without the aid of any 

 animal, 120 days; in the Philippine Islands, practically the 

 same as in India, except that here the water buffalo is used 

 instead of the ox, to the detriment of progress; but in the 

 rice-growing region of Louisiana and Texas, with the aid 



