CHAPTER X 

 THE ROLE THAT TILLAGE PLAYS 



Just when man began the improvement of soils by 

 means of tillage tools we do not know, nor do we know 

 the kind of tools that were first employed. 



This, however, we know: the first written evidence of 

 civilization includes in its work simple tillage operations 

 that the fruits of the field might be increased. The first 

 simple tool may have been a shell from the sea, or a 

 pointed stone from the mountain side, or it may have been 

 a sharpened stick ; it matters not, for in time these and 

 other kinds were succeeded by the crooked stick, fastened 

 to the horn of a bull, perhaps, which in time became 

 modified, and developed into the modern tools of tillage. 



Nature tills the land. While we often think Nature 

 neither tills nor cultivates her fields, we forget that every 

 force she has at work is actually performing just these 

 very things. For what are the freezing and the 

 thawing the heaving of the surface but tillage opera- 

 tions ; what are the crumbling and tearing and breaking by 

 air and water but simple forms of tillage ; what are the 

 channels, made by earthworms and other animals that 

 burrow in the earth, but plowing of another order; what 

 are the deposits of silt, left from overflowing waters, but 

 new earth, ready for newly laid seeds, as rich and effec- 

 tive as that turned by plow or any cultivating tool ; what 

 are the roots that work their way deep into the soil but 

 vegetable tools of tillage ; what are these one and all 

 of them but plows and harrows and hoes, which Nature 

 uses for preparing the land for new seeds, for new crops? 



