.v.] 



CULTIVATION IN" GENERAL. 



51 



alike for all the seeds. If it be parsnips or carrots, which require 

 a \^"ider distance bet^veen the rows ; or, cabbage-plants, which, 

 as thev are to stand only for a while, do not require distances so 

 wide ; in these cases other drillers may be made. 



93. In the case of large pieces of ground, a hand-driller is not 

 sufficient. Yet, if the land be ploughed^ furrows might make the 

 paths, the harrow might smooth the ground, and the hand-driller 

 might be used for onions, or for amthing else. However, what 

 I did in America for Kidney beans was this : I had a roller drawn 

 by an ox or a horse. The roller was about eight inches in di- 

 ameter, and ten feet long. To that part of the frame of the roUer 

 which projects, or hangs over, beyond the roller behind, I attached, 

 by means of tviro pieces of icood and two pins, a bar ten feet long. 

 Into this bar I put ten teeth ; and near the middle of the bar two 

 handles. The roller, being put in motion, breaks all the clods that 

 the haiTOw has left, draws after it the ten teeth, and the ten teeth 

 make ten drills, as deep or as shallow as the man chooses who 

 follows the roller holding the two handles of the bar. The two 

 pieces of wood, which connect the bar with the hinder projecting 

 part of the frame of the roller, icorh on the pins, so as to let the 

 bar up and do^Ti, as occasion may require : and, of course, while 

 the roller is turning at the end, the bar, with the teeth in it, is 

 raised from the ground. 



94. Thus are ten drills made by an ox, in about jii-e minutes, 

 which would perhaps require a man more than a day to make with 

 a hoe. In short, an ox, or a horse, and a man and a boy, will do 

 t^velve acres in a day with ease. And to draw the drills with a 

 hoe would require forty-eight men at the least ; for, there is the 

 line to be at work as well as the hoe. Wheat, and even peas, are 

 in the fields drilled by machii.es ; but beans cannot, and especially 

 kidney-beans. Drills must be made : and, where they are culti- 

 vated on a large scale, how tedious and expensive must be the 

 operation to make the driUs by line and hoe ! When the driOs are 

 made, the beans are laid in at proper distances, then covered with 

 a light harrow : and after all comes the roller, with the teeth lifted 

 up, of course ; and all is smooth and neat. The expense of such 

 an apparatus is, really, nothing worth notice. 



95. In order to rer.der the march of the ox straight, my ground 

 was ploughed into lands, one of which took the ten rows of kid- 

 ney-beans : so that the ox had only to be kept straight along upon 



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