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much I think, for general use. The crop was hoed three 

 times with the Arlington slide hoe which I have concluded 

 is the best for my kind of land, for it will do the finest 

 work on land a little rough and stony of any hoe I have 

 used, and on smooth, easy land it must do it to perfection, 

 leaving very little for the hands to do except to pull the 

 weeds between the plants ; it pays to go slow with the 

 slide hoe and run as close to the rows as possible, for one 

 hour's work with the hoe will save more than two hours' 

 hand weeding, and every hour's work saved, is money in 

 the farmer's pocket. Keep the hoes going, start them be- 

 fore the weeds show and keep the soil stirring. The 

 Arlington hoe is made by a blacksmith in Arlington and is 

 a good serviceable tool, much better than the imitations in 

 the market without his name on them. The fourth hoeing 

 was done with a common scuffle hoe cut down to about 7 

 inches, as I found that the latter worked best of any, where 

 the weeds were somewhat large, as I am sorry to say they 

 were on this piece at the last weeding. 



Finished first weeding May 31; second June 27 and third 

 July 15 after which no more was necessary. The crop 

 grew vigorously until the hot, sticky, moist weather, the 

 last of July when they began to fall and were ready to rake 

 out Aug. 25. After lying on the ground till Sept. 20, they 

 were picked up into crate? and allowed to stand out doors 

 covered up with a waterproof cloth until Nov. 1, when they 

 were taken in and weighed, there being 266 bushels on the 

 half acre, all marketable onions, though not as large as 

 those grown on the same ground the year before when the 

 same half acre yielded 400 bushels. There were no scul- 

 lions among them and a bushel of scullions could not be 

 found on the whole three acres. The crop was not effected 

 by maggots, smut or lice, but the blight seems to have 

 spared no particular locality in its coming and my crop 



Note. — I bave also used the wheel hoes made by E.L. Blake & Co., Peabody, 

 and find tbem very useful after the onions are up five or six inches, ami think 

 they will do more work in a day than any other I hive used; one point in their 

 favor is that they are honestly and thoroughly made, which is more than we can 

 say of many of our farming tools 



