8 MECHAISICS. 



Nothing shows the advancement of modern agriculture 

 in a more striking light than the rapid improvement in 

 farm implements. It has enabled the farmer within the 

 last fifty years to effect several times the w^ork with an 

 equal force of horses and men. Plows turn up the soil 

 deeper, more evenly and perfectly, and with greater ease 

 of draught; hoes and spades have become lighter and 

 more efficient ; grain, instead of being beaten out by the 

 slow and laborious work of the flail, is now showered in 

 torrents from the thrashing-machine ; horse-rakes accom- 

 plish singly the work of many men using the old hand- 

 rake ; horse-forks convey hay to the barn or stack with 

 ease and rapidity ; twelve acres of ripe grain are neatly 

 cut in one day with a two-horse reaper; grain drills and 

 planting machines, avoiding the tiresome drudgery of hand 

 labor, distribute the seed for the future crop with even- 

 ness and precision. 



The owner of a seventy-thousand-acre farm in Illinois 

 carries on nearly all his work by labor-saving machinery. 

 He drives posts by horse-power ; breaks his ground with 

 Comstock's rotary spader; mows, rakes, loads, unloads, 

 and stacks his hay by horse-power ; cultivates his corn 

 with two-horse, seated or sulky cultivators ; ditches low 

 ground, sows and plants by machinery ; so that his labor- 

 ers ride in the performance of their tasks without exhaust- 

 ins: their strenojth with needless walkinc: over extended 

 fields. 



The great value of improved farm machinery to the 

 country at large has been lately proved by the introduc- 

 tion of the reaper. Careful estimate determined that the 

 number of reaping machines introduced througliout the 

 country up to the beginning of the great rebellion, per- 

 formed an amount of labor while working in harvest 

 nearly equal to a million of men with hand implements. 

 The reaper thus filled the void caused by the demand on 

 workingmen for the armv. An earlier occurrence of that 



