252 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



and discharged underneath the machine, while the husked 

 ear passes clear off the ends of the rollers. 



Machines for distributing special and also liquid fertilizers 

 have been lonof used in England, and to a limited extent 

 here ; but I think the first practical machine to spread barn- 

 yard manure, long or short, or compost, is the Kemp Man- 

 ure Spreader recently invented and introduced, and seeming 

 to do its work satisfactorily, especially if used in spreading 

 from a heap in the field drawn out the previous season, 

 doubtless the best practice. 



It seems strange that the dump-cart now so commonly used 

 with a pair of horses should have only come into use within 

 the last twenty-five or thirty years. While we have had our 

 ox-carts and one-horse carts which unloaded by dimiping, we 

 could only use a pair of horses on a wagon, as there has 

 been no device for resting the neap of a cart on the backs or 

 necks of horses. 



Whoever the man was that had the genius to cut off the 

 neap of his ox-cart about half-way, and by putting in a 

 king-bolt through the end into the axle of the fore wheels of 

 his wagon, to make a cart easily drawn by horses, to turn 

 handily, and to dump the load readily, he deserves to have 

 his name perpetuated. Our neat and handy carts and wag- 

 ons co^itrast with the necessities of the early settlers, and 

 most strongly with those of Virginia and Maryland, who 

 lacked the all-conquering, persistent energy of the colonists 

 of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. 



The transportation of tobacco in the absence of travelled 

 roads is thus described in " Beverly's History of Virginia." 



The tobacco was very solidly pressed into large hogsheads ; 

 in each end of these, through the heads, was driven around 

 pin, some two or three inches in diameter, with a square, 

 sharp point ; each pin projected some eight or ten inches 

 from the head, and on these, forming axles, was attached by 

 withes a rude pair of shafts made from saplings, and thus 

 the hogshead of tobacco was trundled like a great roller, 

 from the interior, miles to the seaport for shipping. 



Of the countless small tools we use on the farm, I have 

 said nothing : they generally have no history, except as being 

 improvements on the rude instruments used by the succes- 



