THE APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO AGRICULTUKE. 17 



Steadily and surely the Government is overcoming these maraud- 

 ers upon our prosperity. It is now possible to grow cotton that is 

 weevil proof; fruit trees can be saved by a wash discovered by the 

 scientists of the Department of Agriculture; the southern cattle in- 

 fected with the tick and the New England timber to which cling the 

 broAvn-tail and the g^'psy moth alike are quarantined from other 

 parts of the country. So the war goes on, with victory sure to rest 

 with mankind at last. 



EFFECT OF INVENTION ON AGRICULTURE. 



It is to improve farm tools that manufacture may thank agricul- 

 ture for the present large number of workers which she has borrowed 

 from her older sister. In the beginning man's plow was only a forked 

 stick; he sowed by hand, harrowed by dragging a piece of brush over 

 his field, weeded, when he weeded at all, with a shell, or perhaps with 

 no tools at all, using only his bare hands. At the beginning of his- 

 toric times, the Egyptians were using a bent piece of heavy timber 

 drawn by oxen. Later the point of this plowshare was shod with 

 iron. The Romans further improved the plow by joining two pieces 

 of timber at the ends to form an acute angle, and they covered the 

 angle with the iron. This was the first real plow ; and it was the only 

 plow known to Europe for almost 2,000 years. 



Finally, the Dutch made another advance, when they curved the 

 moldboard, the part of the plow which turns over the furrow, so as 

 to make the furrow wider. The Dutch also made the beam by which 

 the plow is drawn and added the two handles by which the plowman 

 guides his implement. Modern farming began at that time, about 

 1725. 



To-day, the great western farmers use a machine driven by a 100- 

 horsepower engine, which plows, sows, and harrows at the same time 

 a strip 30 feet wide at the rate of 3 or 4 miles an hour, covering more 

 than 100 acres a day, and doing the work of 50 men with teams. 

 This great mechanism would have been impossible without the earlier 

 discoveries of the humble Dutch peasants. 



Since the invention of the modern plow, the most important ma- 

 chine yet devised for the liberation of the farmer from hand toil is 

 the reaper. This machine is as important to us as the cotton gin, 

 for while the latter has made cotton planting profitable and has also 

 given us cheap clothes, the reaper has insured us against famine and 

 at the same time has made the farmer's labor so much more effective 

 that agriculture can spare us enough help to man our mills. 



13591°— 13 2 



