THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



251 



against an opposition, which, in the case of the 

 laborers, was exasperated to incendiarism. 



The same principle of economy, in the true 

 sense of the term, applies in greater or less de- 

 gree to all other agricultural implements ; and 

 the mere cost of a machine is but a little matter, 

 provided it accomplishes what it proposes. True, 

 one machine may be cheaper or dearer than an- 

 other of the same class; and particular ma- 

 chines — as reapers, all of which are patented 

 at present, and bear a high price to remunerate 

 the inventor — may be higher than the cost of 

 construction, which is one element of compe- 

 tition in such cases, will justify; but as econo- 

 mizing labor very few good implements can be 

 rated too high. In exigencies this is admitted 

 by the practice of all farmers. Hence the 

 popularity of these same reapers, which have 

 brought enormous profit to their several makers 

 or inventors. The necessity of cutting the 

 wheat crop in a given time, like the necessity 

 of threshing it, compels the presence of the 

 most expeditious means for the purpose. 



But it can hardly fail to strike one that the 

 necessity of sowing a crop in good time, and on 

 the most suitably prepared seed bed, is not less 

 necessary to the great end of cropping than the 

 need of proper means to sever the crop from the 

 ground, or to prepare it for market. 



Among implements of this class, which may 

 be called really great inventions, Crosskill's 

 Clod-Crusher is entitled to a high place. Its 

 name is its best description, as its performance 

 is its highest eulogy. It does not pulverize 

 clods, though there is as much resulting dust 

 and fine soil as from the action of the best 

 harrow; but it reduces them, the largest and 

 hardest, without .difficulty, into minute and 

 manageable fragments, leaving the harrow in 

 this respect completely in the shade. Indeed, 

 it accomplishes, at one traverse, what the har- 

 row can never accomplish at all, as the follow- 

 ing description will prove: 



It is a roller six feet long and thirty inches 

 in diameter, weighing about two thousand 

 pounds. But unlike most rollers, which are 

 either a solid cylinder, or, at most, a cylinder in 

 two or three sections on the same axle, this 

 imptement is composed of twenty-three inde- 

 pendent serrated wheels of cast iron — the teeth 

 standing out like cogs, but reduced to an obtuse 

 cone or boss at the point — "supported on four 

 feathered arms" — each alternate wheel of some 



three inches less diameter than the others — 

 with an eye formed in the centre fitted to 

 move easily on the common axle. But the eye 

 of the larger wheels is expanded to such size as 

 to give them a play of several inches on the 

 axle, which is guarded at such points by a 

 revolving collar, fitted to catch the wheels as 

 they descend. Perpendicular to the angle of 

 each tooth, on both faces of the wheel, is a 

 small cast iron wedge, or flange, which, as the 

 clod breaks, drops down on it and splits and 

 mashes it into smaller fragments. With its 

 weight and momentum, its cones and wedges, 

 its vertical play of the larger wheels, and lateral 

 play of all, it is evident that it must be a power- 

 ful implement, and capable of reducing the 

 most intractable clods. 



The common roller, if it does not crush .the 

 clods at once, presses them into the ground 

 where they lie unbroken, and affording no soil 

 for the plants around them to feed in, or are 

 again dragged up by the harrow; or, in very 

 hard clods, it bounces from one to another, 

 breaking only those that it strikes with some 

 impact. 



The harrow frequently passes by or over 

 clods, and eren when the largest are broken, 

 which is by no means universal, their frag- 

 ments become rounded by attrition with the 

 harrow teeth or with each other, and further 

 harrowing is useless as to them, and pernicious 

 as to the soil. 



The implement in question does neither. If 

 a clod is pressed into the ground it is just in 

 the best position to be crushed; and so far 

 from slipping away from it clods are frequently 

 caught between the surfaces of the wheels, 

 lifted up and ground to powder — in this way 

 we have more than once seen a broom-straw 

 tussock completely ginned of the indurated dirt 

 that enclosed the roots — the whole surface is 

 reduced to a mass of dust, fine dirt, and clods 

 about the size of a hen's egg or less, and left 

 just in the best condition to receive the seed, 

 and allow of the best action of the covering 

 harrow. The track of the machine presents 

 much the appearance of sheep traets over a 

 mellow surface. 



It thus combines the action of the roller and 

 harrow into one implement, and performs at 

 one working what both of them often fail alto- 

 gether to accomplish, and never succeed en- 

 tirely in doing. 



