UNIVERSITY 



275 



CHAPTER X. 



FARM MACHINERY. 



THIS work would be very incomplete if no notice were taken of 

 farm machinery, for this is the age of machinery, in which head work 

 has, in a great measure, displaced hand work, to the very great profit 

 of the farmer. No farmer can expect to make the farm pay by hand 

 work, as it was done a number of years ago, when the scythe, the 

 sickle, the grain cradle, the hand rake, the flail and the hay fork were 

 in use. He is forced now to use the mower, and the reaper which 

 now binds the sheaves and leaves them ready for the shock; the 

 horse rake, the threshing machine and the hay and grain elevators; 

 and there are now thousands of farms upon which steam engines 

 do the work of horses, or of the still earlier hand work. The farmer 

 now must be a mechanic, and make a study of machines, as he has 

 done of stock and feed and fertilizers. 



The first implement the farmer thinks of is the plow; and when he 

 remembers the old-fashioned plows, and compares them with the 

 innumerable improved kinds now in use, he gets a fair idea of the 

 advance that has been made in agricultural practice by the aid of the 

 mechanic. No doubt this improvement will still go on until the 

 present difficulties in the way are removed, and the fields will be 

 plowed by steam power, just as the grain is carried to market, 

 thousands of miles, by the same force. 



One of the greatest improvements in the common plows is the use 

 of steel, and chilled cast iron, which is even harder and more durable 

 than steel. This improvement, together with forms better adapted to 

 meet and overcome the resistance of the soil, has much reduced the 

 draft of plows and eased the work. A plow that represents a type 

 of the modern improved implements, and which deserves more 

 extended notice in this chapter than has been already given to it, is 



THE ROLAND CHILLED PLOW. 



(See Illustration, page 39.) 



The shape of this plow is such that the whole front of it is a sharp 

 cutting edge; the material is harder than the hardest steel and will 

 not rust, and is so smooth and non-adherent that it will scour itself 



