16 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January. 
the tongue and hangs below. In this consists 
the chief merit of the whole arrangement, for 
by it the plow can be drawn at any depth be¬ 
low the surface, provided it be wooded so that 
the handles do not interfere with the sides of 
the trench. Any wheelwright will alter the 
wooding of a plow, or new wood it so that it 
shall have but one handle, and that directly 
above the furrow. The plow is fastened to the 
end of the knee in which a pin is set, by a 
rather short chain at first, which may be length¬ 
ened afterwards. The liiglit at which the draft 
for the plow should be is regulated by raising 
or lowering the knee, which is not only chained 
by one end to the tongue, but also to the axle, 
and is made higher or lower by blocks laid 
across under it, resting upon the spreading fork 
made by the tongue, where it joins the axletree, 
KNEE FOR DITCHING PLOW. 
and shoved forward or drawn back, according 
as one wishes the draft chain higher or lower. 
It will be necessary to change plows as the 
depth increases. There are several plows so 
arranged that very narrow mould-boards may 
be attached, and after these, the subsoil plow 
may be used until little besides “finishing” re¬ 
mains to be done. In stony land men with 
crowbars and pickaxes must attend and take out 
stones as fast as they are touched by the plow. 
-«-■ —a o gw— - 
The Geddes Harrow. 
Some of the readers of the Agriculturist hav¬ 
ing found difficulty in making the Geddes har¬ 
row, we wrote to the widely-known and justly- 
honored farmer of Fairmouat asking information 
Fig. 1 .— MltltOW SEEN FROM ABOVE. 
as to the best mode of constructing it. He 
replied promptly and in full, and at his sugges¬ 
tion a harrow was ordered for us with the few 
improvements which years of use have brought 
about. This harrow has been drawn and en¬ 
graved with care, and may well serve as a 
model for the construction of others. 
Figure 1 is a lop view, showing the construc¬ 
tion ; Figure 2 is the harrow seen in perspec¬ 
tive; Figure 3 is the harrow folded back, the 
handles strapped together, in shape for transpor¬ 
tation. Wo find that in this form, unwieldy and 
heavy as it appears, it may be rolled about, 
pitched carefully end over end, loaded by one 
man into a cart or wagon, or drawn with ease 
upon the ground. This alone is a very strong- 
argument in favor of handles instead of ropes 
with which to lift the sides and clear the teeth of 
clods or obstructions without stopping the team. 
LETTER PROM IION. GEO. GEDDES. 
“ The harrow called by my name was invented 
by me perhaps 35 years ago. The leading ideas 
in my mind were that the line of draft should 
pass through the center of the harrow, and that 
on each side of this line of draft there should be 
the same number of teeth, and that the teeth 
should be so placed that each side tvould have 
just the same amount of leverage or lateral 
pressure against the center line. The object of 
this arrangement was to secure a uniform for¬ 
ward motion without lateral vibration; the 
teeth also to be so placed that those in the 
hindermost timber should cut ex¬ 
actly in the center of the spaces 
made by the foremost row of 
teeth. To accomplish this, the 
center of weight, of work or re¬ 
sistance, and the line of draft, 
must exactly coincide. But there 
must be no vibration, that is, the 
harrow must move directly for¬ 
ward without jerking from side 
to side. If there is any essential 
lateral vibration, the teeth cannot move with 
any approach to regularity or accuracy, and 
cannot harrow the ground evenly. The well- 
known square (sometimes called Scotch) harrow 
violates the principles that I aimed to follow 
accurately in my harrow, for it constantly vi¬ 
brates, more or less. The best Scotch harrow 
that I ever saw had so many teeth that if the 
machine could be made to move directly for¬ 
ward, the marks of the teeth would have been 
only two inches from center to center, whereas 
in practice they constantly left spaces on hard 
land of five inches wide unharrowed. The 
harrow also had a tendency, on hard land, to 
move too much in the direction of the length 
of the timbers, because it had more teeth on one 
side of the line of draft than on the other. 
“ All harrows clog up on land having clover 
roots, stubble, etc., that has not been perfectly 
plowed under, and it is often necessary to clear 
away this matter. To do this on new land, 
that had some roots broken off from the stumps, 
I have in my early days been compelled to 
unhitch my horses from a Scotch harrow to 
clear the forward part of it. In my harrow I 
tried to overcome this difficulty, so I put a joint 
exactly in the line of draft, reaching from the 
hook, by which it was drawn back through the 
harrow. This joint is open and works on hing¬ 
es, that allows either half .to be turned wSubut 
not down, and laid over on the other half, where 
every tooth can be cleaned whenever necessary. 
“Persons have often tried to make a harrow 
the two sides cf which would fold together, both 
up and down. This cannot be done without 
having the center of the harrow liable to be 
lifted up by the power necessary to draw it. 
“ The whole object of this longitudinal joint is 
to enable the user to clean with ease every sub¬ 
stance that might get among the teeth and thus 
obstruct the perfect working of 
the harrow. It is some advant¬ 
age to have the center part of the 
harrow bend down into a dead 
furrow or other hollow, but the 
cleaning is the important matter. 
“To enable the driver to lift 
a side of the harrow when in 
motion, handles similar to such 
as are used on corn cultivators 
arc now commonly put, one on each half of 
the harrow. By having these handles it is not 
necessary to stop the team to clean the harrow. 
“ To avoid the rising up in the middle when 
in use, the longitudinal timbers that make the 
joint should be only one inch apart, with two 
bolts, one in the rear end of each stick, near the 
lower side, with large heads projecting, so as to 
meet when the harrow is level on top. The 
hinges should bo on the top, and the hook to 
draw by should form a part of the forward hinge. 
“ You will see that I adopted the idea that 
an equilateral triangle presented the best form 
to carry out my views. None of the old engrav¬ 
ings show my harrow as it now appears with the 
handles, which I consider a great improvement. 
I have no interest in making these harrows as 
3.— HARROW FOLDED FOR TRANSPORTATION. 
I took no patent. Occasionally a friend writes 
to me to get a harrow made for him, in which 
case I put the order into the hands of a mechanic 
that lives near me. More than twenty years 
ago, I was told that a Boston agricultural ware¬ 
house had sold 5,000 of these harrows. Many 
years since I had a request made me to have 
one constructed for the government of Russia. 
In short, the harrow lias gone into general use.” 
The wood is 21 in. Oak, the middle and 
outer sticks are 5 feet long, the rear mes 4i 
feet; the teeth of 7 | n in. square iron, 1 foot long, 
and the hinge-straps 21 in. wide, by k in. thick. 
. .. — ^ « ■ ■Tn aQ w» "' -- 
Action of the Frost on the Soil. 
Sandy soils are not as a rule benefited by fall 
plowing, and by thus being more exposed to the 
action of the sun and frost than they otherwise 
would be. This is doubtless because the organic 
matter which is so important in this class of soils 
is much more rapidly decomposed and caused 
to disappear when thus treated. Peaty soils or 
those in which there is an excess of organic mat¬ 
ter are benefited for the same reason, and because 
the peat becomes less pasty or fibrous, which ever 
nature it has, and more granular. A very marked 
example of the effects of frost on some organic 
substances may be observed in case a crop 
of buckwheat intended for plowing under be 
caught by a severe frost. Though the crop on 
the field might have amounted to several tons, 
the frost and the decompositions which follow 
will reduce it -to an apparently valueless mass 
in a very short time. Little besides the stubble 
