136 



77G0 pounds out of its bed, on to a drag, with this hook, 

 though it took three pair of cattle to do it. I afterwards 

 loaded the rock on to a wagon, and teamed it to market 

 with two horses, having it weighed so as to know just what 

 we had done. 



I once worked steadily for two hours with a pair of 2400 

 pound mares and a driver, and then stood and counted 

 eighty stones, as large, and larger, than two men could roll, 

 besides many smaller ones, and no digging around any of 

 them, though they were all fast when we started in. It is 

 quick, exciting, and hard work to hold the hook pulling out 

 large stones, and I would not advise a man to work at it 

 more than one or two hours a day, but in that time he could 

 dig out enough to keep the team busy dragging them off all 

 the rest of the day. Junipers, alders, huckleberry, and all 

 such bushes can be turned bottom up with the utmost 

 promptness and dispatch, and it would make you laugh to 

 see it done, it seems so quick and easy, and you wonder 

 why you never thought of such a thing yourself. 



The best time for doing this work is when the ground is 

 wet and soft, it can be done so much easier than in a 

 dry time when the land is dry and hard. We generally 

 have the most time for it in early spring, just as the frost 

 gets out, or after harvest in the fall, when the we&ther is 

 cool, and we have time to leave the regular work and make 

 some improvement in our surroundings. 



I have been at work at odd times for the past three years, 

 on a pasture as rough and stony as most any in our county, 

 save the ledges of the coast, though fortunately veiy few of 

 the stone are larger than a team can handle without blast- 

 ing. Some parts of the piece, and in fact a good share of 

 it, yielded more than 300 perch of stone to the acre, and 

 though I have a market for them I should hardly have at- 

 tempted the job without the hook that I have described, for 

 I believe it has saved more than 8100 worth of work in 

 these three years, and is now as good as when made ; the 

 only repairing necessary being to sharpen the points occa- 



