No. 244.] 3ai 



or hills (for the system is applicable to either, the hills are rows 

 with intervals between, and would suit our Indian corn as well as 

 vegetables,) and supplies the crop with additional nutriment. Be- 

 sides every successive earthing up deepens the furrow in the centre or 

 the interval and brings up the subsoil to be mixed with the surface 

 mould. By these repeated plough-hoeings the staple of the land is 

 increased, a deeper, softer, and richer bed is prepared for plants, 

 weeds of every kind eradicated, and so far from its fertility being 

 diminished it is preserved and even augmented. It must be plain 

 too, to every farmer that knows anything about the practice of 

 ploughing, (and a great majority of them do) that correct and ex- 

 pert ploughmen are essential, nay indispensable for all crops and 

 soils, and especially the ploughed and hoed crops, and the f*rst break- 

 ing up for these the most important perhaps of all. This chiefly 

 consists in drawing straight furrows and at a regular depth. When 

 this is performed in the first instance, all after operations go on with 

 order and facility ; and in truth without this the weeding plough 

 is perhaps injurious rather than beneficial. When the lines or rows 

 in which potatoes, cabbage, turneps or Indian corn are planted and 

 grow, are not straight and equidistant, this machine which from its 

 moveable joint is widened to embrace the whole interval must en- 

 croach on, or interfere with the crop or must frequently be stopped 

 and by the workman adjusted to occuring irregularities. 



W^e expect it is not very unlike our cultivator, at any rate it is 

 for a similar purpose, to extirpate weeds and stir the surface soil, 

 and with the aid of the double mould-board pluw must make more 

 perfect work, and advance greatly the growth and yield of the crop. 

 For as all plants are sustained principally by their roots, especially 

 when young, the quantity of food which these reach and consume, 

 must be proportioned to their range and extension. Of late the va- 

 rious parts of the weeding and double mould-board plow in Great 

 Britain have been combined and modeled in to one, which diminishes 

 greatly the expense, and on trial has been found equally efficient. 

 By a slight change in the machinery it can be speedily prepared 

 either for weeding the rows or earthing up the plants, and this gives 

 it considerable superiority over the other two which have been nearly 

 supplanted. The sock or share are furnished with two feathers, or 

 or edges, and is of a triangular si ape ; the mould-boards are move- 

 able for greater or less expansion, and can be separated from the 

 body of the instrument when used as a weeding plow, in which 

 latter case, two wings, armed with straight and curved coulters, are 

 secured to the beam and also by means of hinges can be spread out 



