250 DIRECT SOWINS. 



then there is no help for it but to resort to the very much slower 

 and more expensive employment of picks (Fig. 13) or hoes, assisted, 

 wherever necessary, vdth the grubbing axe (Figs. 14 and 15). The 

 hoe should be heavy and strong, with a blade narrow enongh to 

 give it penetrating power. The various patterns represented in 

 Figs. 22, 16, 17 and 87 are excellent ones according to circum- 

 stances. But it is obvious that the use of hoes and picks, by reason 

 of the enormous expenditure it entails, cannot be generalised and 

 must be confined to very exceptional cases and to the preparation 

 of areas of very limited extent, 



Whether the plough or pick or hoe is used, the depth to which 

 the soil is broken up will be in direct proportion to its stiflness, to 

 the quantity ot invasive roots it contains, and to its stony nature. 



§ 2. Sowing the seeds. 



The sowing may be effected broadcast with the hand, or by 

 means of drills or other special machines. 



When the plough is used in preparing the ground, the ordinary 

 sowing tube of the Indian cultivator (Fig. 89), attached to and 

 dragged behind the plough in the furrow just made, would be 

 advantageously used, /is a wooden funnel, into which, with his 

 right hand, the sower keeps dropping the seeds ; < is a thin hollow 

 bamboo, about 3 feet long, the bore of which must be wide enough, 

 to allow the largest seeds sown to fall through freely. With his 

 left hand the sower guides the tube and holds it constantly vertical. 

 The thickness of the sowing is regulated entirely by the sower ; 

 the thicker the sowing is to be, the more seed he has to let slip 

 through his fingers. If the seeds are small, and are on that 

 account likely to fall too thick, they should be mixed with fine dry 

 earth or, better still, with vegetable mould, farmyard manure or 

 surkhi ash. With this tube seeds of any size can of course be 

 sown. The great advantage of using this and the implement next 

 to be described is that the sowing is effected in continuous parallel 

 lines, thereby facilitating very considerably after-supervision. 



Another very useful, but simple and easily made and maintained, 

 contrivance, which may be used in whatever way the ground has 

 been prepared and at any time after the plough has been used, is 

 the perambulator drill (Fig, 90). The seed is put into the hopper 

 h, at the bottom of which rotates horizontally a cylinder c, grooved 

 longitudinally along its circumference and connected by means of 

 an endless driving band with the wheel w. st is a flat strip of iron 

 that can be slid backwards and forwards, by means of th& 



