CULTIVATORS 95 



the plow or the disc, and some type of spring-tooth harrow ought 

 to be in any collection of orchard implements that is supposed to 

 be at all complete. There is one objection to the ordinary spring- 

 tooth harrow for young orchards and that is that it is so likely 

 to catch on a stone or some other obstacle and jump against the 

 trees. Careful driving will help to prevent this difficulty, and 

 of course it does not apply in land free from stones and 'other 

 obstacles. Another objection which has been made to the spring- 

 tooth and which may be worth mentioning here, is that where 

 an orchard has patches of witch (quack) grass in it this harrow 

 will drag small pieces to other parts of the orchard and drop 

 them, thus helping to spread this noxious weed. This is prob- 

 ably a legitimate objection but can not offset the many advantages 

 of this type of tooth either on harrows or cultivators. 



We have next the acme harrow shown in Figure 40. The 

 action of this machine is to cut into the soil behind and to crush 

 the clods in front. Where the soil conditions are right it will do 

 as much work as anything in an orchard. But it will not work 

 on land which is either very stony or which has much trash on it. 

 Barring these limitations it is an excellent implement and will 

 leave the soil in as good condition as anything on the list. 



Lastly among harrows we have the spike-tooth or smoothing 

 type. This is not considered a very important implement in the 

 orchard. It is especially designed to leave the surface fine and 

 smooth and occasionally such a tool may be needed, particularly 

 for covering some kinds of cover crops, but this would be the 

 first thing to strike out if one were trying to cut down the list 

 of implements. 



Cultivators. It is difficult to draw the line between cultiva- 

 tors and harrows because many implements are used for both 

 purposes. In the classification here given the cultivators are 

 used primarily for cultivating and are more under the control 

 of the operator than the harrows. 



We have first the implement shown in Figure 41, and known 

 technically on the market as the orchard cultivator. The teeth 

 are entirely rigid and it is designed especially for use in 

 getting the land in shape and levelling it, after it has been 



