STORY OF THE IMPLEMENTS OF TILLAGE 139 



91. Story of the Implements of Tillage. Many of the im- 

 provements in the tillage implements of to-day have been 

 made in quite recent years. When the famous Minute 

 Men of the Revolution left their plows standing in the 

 furrows to rally for the defense of their country, they left 

 a clumsy wooden " bull plow," which was about as crude 

 and primitive as the plows used by the Egyptians when 

 the pyramids were building, fifty centuries before. So, 

 too, of other farm tools of that time. There had been 

 little improvement in them for five thousand years. Even 

 a generation later, when Thomas Jefferson became Presi- 

 dent, the farmer in America and elsewhere still plowed 

 with this bull plow, which at best could only scratch the 

 ground, sowed his grain broadcast (by hand), cut it with 

 the prehistoric sickle, and threshed it on the barn floor 

 with the flail of prehistoric times if he did not tread it 

 out with cattle, as the ancient Egyptians did. 



The first threshing machine was invented in 1785, but 

 for many years it did not come into use. The only farm 

 "machinery" to be drawn by horses in 1800 was the bull 

 plow, an equally clumsy, wedge-shaped, wooden harrow, 

 and a cart. The sickle, scythe, flail, fork, ax, spade, hoe, 

 and rake complete the list of farm implements of that 

 day; and, except perhaps the ax and scythe, all these were 

 awkward in shape and heavy. The first cradle scythe 

 a hand tool, but a vast improvement on the old sickle for 

 harvesting grain was patented in 1803. 1 



In 1800, the era of rapid change in farm machinery was 

 just at hand. A large part of the new machines of this 

 age have to do with the crop at harvest or after it. Some 

 of this machinery will be treated in later chapters. This 

 chapter will now treat of the implements of to-day that 



1 The brief historical statement of the last two paragraphs is taken mainly, 

 with permission, from West's American History and Government,^. 390, 391. 



