AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 251 



they use a large scythe, with a long handle fenced with 

 crooked sticks, which they swing with both hands." 



As an agricultural machine, none has ever been invented 

 which has surpassed the cotton-gin in its importance, from 

 the* change it has wrought in tlie cultivation and production 

 of that great staple so long vaunted as King Cotton, by 

 which the clearing of the lint from the seed was increased 

 in production from the four pounds by hand, or twenty-five 

 by the old roller-gin, to one thousand pounds daily. 



In the cultivation of potatoes one of the most expensive 

 items is the digging or lifting them from the ground. Sev- 

 eral patented machines were exhibited at the Centennial Ex- 

 position, but none seemed to the judges worthy of commen- 

 dation, yet the thirty-five thousand made last 3'ear show 

 that there must be an appreciation of them somewhere. 



The improvements in every branch of dairying have been 

 such as to have almost revolutionized the management of 

 milk in making butter and cheese, both of which are now 

 largely and successfully made in creameries or cheese facto- 

 ries. Churns to the number of over two thousand have been 

 patented since 1803 ; some of them with strange devices, and 

 more than one, as a labor-saving machine, has a rocking- 

 chair combined w^ith a churn ; milk-pails, strainers, shallow 

 pans and deep pans, milk-cans, coolers and creamers with 

 submerged pans and with open pans exposed to an iced at- 

 mosphere, butter-makers and moulds, cans for collecting 

 cream and milk, machinery for making butter and cheese in 

 quantity, cases and packages for sending choice butter to 

 market, and hundreds of devices, not imagined twenty-five 

 years ago, have been patented, and used or discarded as they 

 were proved valuable or worthless. 



Forty-five thousand corn-huskers annually made show a 

 considerable use of that convenient machine. One, patented 

 by Phillip of Stockport, New York, works very success- 

 fully, accomplishing the work of four or five men ; the ears 

 of corn are dropped from a hopper on one or two pairs of 

 gently inclined iron rollers having iron studs projecting about 

 a quarter of an inch, running in a spiral direction around 

 each roller ; as these rollers are made to turn in or toward 

 each other, the husk is caught by the studs, stripped clear, 



