12 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 



This work of subjugation extended through parts of as many 

 years as it has taken minutes to narrate it. It taught the inex- 

 perienced farmer how to kill hardhacks, which should have 

 never been allowed to grow. 



The plow sufficed for the uprooting of small willows. As 

 fast as a bout was plowed, the stalks and roots were pulled out 

 by hand, to be afterwards gathered into heaps for burning. 

 Any not loosed by the plow were dug out by the bog hoe. 

 This operation left the ground in fit condition for further 

 manipulations. 



But willows five or six feet high, or higher, did not obliging- 

 ly yield to this treatment. Their roots were too large and 

 descended too deep. The axe was here found necessary. 

 Severing them at an inch or two below the ground's surface, 

 just where they changed to stalks ; in short at their necks, 

 where one cuts off a mean dog's tail, they all died satisfactor- 

 ily. Whenever water bushes were encountered, extermination 

 was found only in substantial extraction. 



The black alder generally grows in bunches of a dozen or 

 more stalks springing from one cluster of roots. Cutting each 

 stalk separately above ground proved a slow, laborious and 

 ineffectual work, even if done on the right day in the month of 

 August, when " the sign was in the heart." It was found that 

 each bunch must be severed from its roots below the ground's 

 surface, or it would sprout and grow again. Questions as to 

 why the Almighty allowed sin to enter the world, and why he 

 endowed weeds and bushes with high vitality have never been 

 satisfactorily answered. If, however, they have been intended 

 for human discipline, the present proprietor has great reason 

 for gratitude. 



But experience, ere long, developed an effectual method of 

 subduing the largest alders. It consisted : 



i. In making a circular incision with an axe, a few inches 

 deep, around the outer roots of a clump, similar to that for- 

 merly made by the old-fashioned doctor, with his dull lancet, 

 around the tooth he was about to extract with his accursed key, 

 of which some of you may have painful recollections. 



2. By carefully introducing to the groove thus made, a small, 

 short linked, cable chain, and so hitching it to the neck of the 



