PREPARING TITjd TEACK. 163 



harrow and brush are used till it is in as fine tilth as 

 would be necessary to raise a premium crop of onions. 

 We will now commence walking the horses on it, which 

 will destroy the even surface and tread it into holes. A 

 scraper will then be needed, and according to my idea, 

 the best is constructed on the following plan : Take two 

 oak planks, fourteen feet long and a foot in width. They 

 are placed together so as to form two sides of an equila- 

 teral triangle, the apex joined by strong iron hinges. Bars 

 are framed in near the base, fastened only at one end, t so 

 that the planks can be brought together or separated as 

 wanted. The plank on the right hand side, as you stand 

 behind it, is faced with a thin plate of steel, extending 

 half an inch below the wood. A chain runs from the 

 point two-thirds of the way along this plank, so as to 

 change the line of draft as required by the spreading 

 of the instrument. At the very end, a handle is bolted 

 on, by which a man guides it, and allows the dirt pushed 

 away by the steel-plate, to be deposited wherever de- 

 sired, by lifting on this handle. 



We commence on the turn, closing the scraper till it is 

 six feet across the base of the triangle, the left-hand plank 

 running in the furrow, which prevents it sliding to the 

 left, and the other side carrying all the loose dirt the width 

 that the instrument is set to the right. We keep on, 

 cleaning out the ditches the same way as on the stretches, 

 only that we close the scraper still more as we want a 

 level surface there, while the turns should be formed so as 

 to have a gradual slope rising from the inside. The out- 

 side of a track twenty feet wide should be raised two feet. 

 Having followed the inside furrow once round the track, 

 we open the wings of the scraper, keeping the draught 

 chain regulated so as to carry the dirt on tlje semicircles 

 further towards the outside ; while on the stretches it is 

 drawn in such a manner that the loose soil is leveled 



