60 



On the Agriculture of the Netherlands. 



does not press much on the land, the hinder part only is boarded. 

 This traineau is loaded with stones, if its own weight is not suffi- 

 cient to break the clods. The stone roller, which is also generally 

 used to compress the surface, does not grind the small clods so 

 well as the traineau ; rather pressing them in : but both these 

 instruments are used according to circumstances, and their united 

 effect is to produce a very fine surface, and give the seed sown 

 every advantage in shooting up through it. A rodded hurdle is 



Rodded Hurdle. 



also used for the same purpose. 



Threshing-machines are of little use where the farms are, in 

 general, so small in extent as they are in the Netherlands. The 

 labour required for a garden cultivation, as it may be very pro- 

 perly called, requires many hands, which are usefully employed 

 in winter in threshing out the corn. A threshing-machine would 

 be no saving there, and the cost of it would absorb too great a 

 portion of the capital. Much of the corn is winnowed with the 

 shovel and fan, as it has been from the earliest days of agriculture; 

 but they occasionally use a winnowing-machine, which blows off" 

 the chaff", like that which is in common use in England, and 

 which is said to have been originally invented in Switzerland. 



" Besides the common scythes, hoes, and rakes, there is a peculiar 

 instrument for cutting corn, called the Hainault scythe, of which notice 

 has been taken in many agricultural publications. It is a very useful 

 instrument, and in the hands of an experienced person will cut a third 

 more corn, in the same time, than can be done with the reaping-hook. 

 It is a short scythe, of which the blade is broad and about 20 inches 

 long. The handle is about the same length, and fixed so as to form an 

 acute angle with the blade when in the act of cutting : it is bent out- 

 ward at the end where it is held, at an angle of about 120°, and is there 

 shaped like the stout handle of a knife or turnhig tool. It should be 

 so constructed that, when the blade lies flat on the ground, the man's 

 hand is nearly perpendicularly over the centre of the curve of the blade, 

 so that he can swing the instrument, by a motion of the wrist, without 

 stooping. A leathern strap doubled and nailed on the handle, in which 

 he puts the fore finger, prevents its slipping from his grasp. In the left 

 hand he holds a light stick 3 or 4 feet long, having an iron h(|)k fixed 

 at the end, bent into a semicircle of about 8 inches diameter. With 



