14 HINTS AND HELPS 



IMPLEMENTS USED IN SOIL TILLAGE. 



The spade and the plow are the first implements to be 

 used in tillage. 



The Spade, is made for entering the soil, prying it 

 off and turning it over. Its size and shape have been fixed 

 by experiment. Many sizes are made according to the 

 work for which they are to be used. It is heavier and 

 stronger, then the shovel, which is made for shoveling 

 soft earth. Where the soil is not too hard, the spading 

 fork will spade the soil easier and quicker. 



The Plow, less than ninety years ago the wooden 

 plow was the only one in use. In 1823, an inventor in 

 Hartford, Connecticut, made the first cast plow bottom 

 ever made. Nearly all plows before this were crooked 

 sticks with a little metal protection. 



Joel Nourse, in 1825, with an ox team took three hun- 

 dred cast iron plows from Hartford to Worcester, Mass. 

 He became the head of the Ames Plow Co., of Worcester, 

 Massachusetts. 



Frost Horton, a New York statesman, about the same 

 time began developing plows. These two men kept ex- 

 perimenting until they had each perfected nearly five hun- 

 dred different kinds of plows. 



The object of plowing is to alter the texture, forming 

 from a comparatively hard soil a mellow layer of earth, 

 and to bury beneath the surface, weeds and other vegeta- 

 tion and manure that it may rapidly decay. 



Plows vary in shape according to the purpose for 

 which they are to be used. The Subsoil Plow is one 

 made to follow in the furrow of the other plow. It has a 

 long point which goes twelve or fifteen inches into the 

 ground breaking up the subsoil It does not turn up the 

 lower soil but breaks it up. 



The Harrow, is the implement to follow the plow, 

 i. e. to be used after the plowing is done. All kinds ex- 

 cept the old spike-tooth, are of recent origin. They pul- 

 verize the soil and should always be used after plowing. 

 The kind of harrow to be used depends upon the work to 



