OTHER AIDS TO FAEMING 177 



potatoes in the dark of tlie moon, and we plant 

 quite a large acreage every year, and there has 

 never been a year in the past six years but what 

 we had a good crop, and our neighbors' potatoes 

 generally were a failure, although we never ob- 

 served whether they were planted by the moon. 

 But we have always attributed our success to the 

 fact that we heavily manured our soil with green 

 manures, plowed, cultivated, and sprayed well. 



We are not prepared to say that the moon has 

 such influences upon land as well as upon sea 

 which can be utilized as an aid to the business of 

 farming, but the fact that there have been men in 

 all ages of the world's history who, from study, 

 observation, and experiment, have reached the 

 conclusion that it does have such influences, it be- 

 comes worthy of some consideration. 



IMPKOVED FARM MACHINERY. 



Improved farm machinery has been a mighty 

 aid to the business of farming as we have shown 

 in the chapter upon the care of farm machinery, 

 but in improved farm machinery there is concealed 

 a peril to the business to which attention must be 

 called. We recently heard a noted farm lecturer 

 declare from the platform that the invention of 

 the reaper has led to the feeding of the world's 

 hungry. But it will also eventually lead to the 

 world's starvation unless the owners of the reaper 

 become soil builders instead of soil destroyers, 

 for, the advent of the reaper has made extensive 

 farming possible upon a larger scale than has 

 ever been known in the world's history, and ex- 

 tensive farming has always led to soil exhaustion. 



