HINTS AND HKD PS 
H 
IMPLEMENTS USED IN SOIL TILLAGE. 
The spade and the plow are the first implements to be 
used in tillage. 
The Spade, is made for entering the soil, prying it 
off and turning it over. Its size and shape have been fixed 
by experiment. Many sizes are made according to the 
work for which they are to be used. It is heavier and 
stronger, then the shovel, which is made for shoveling 
soft earth. Where the soil is not too hard, the spading 
fork will spade the soil easier and quicker. 
The Plow, less than ninety years ago the wooden 
plow was the only one in use. In 1823, an inventor in 
Hartford, Connecticut, made the first cast plow bottom 
ever made. Nearly all plows before this were crooked 
sticks with a little metal protection. 
Joel Nourse, in 1825, with an ox team took three hun¬ 
dred cast iron plows from Hartford to Worcester, Mass. 
He became the head of the Ames Plow Co., of Worcester,, 
Massachusetts. 
Frost Horton, a New York statesman, about the same 
time began developing plows. These two men kept ex¬ 
perimenting until they had each perfected nearly five hun¬ 
dred different kinds of plows. 
The object of plowing is to alter the texture, forming 
from a comparatively hard soil a mellow layer of earth,, 
and to bury beneath the surface, weeds and other vegeta¬ 
tion and manure that it may rapidly decay. 
Plows vary in shape according to the purpose for 
which they are to be used. The Subsoil Plow is one 
made to follow in the furrow of the other plow. It has a 
long point which goes twelve or fifteen inches into the 
ground breaking up the subsoil It does not turn up the. 
lower soil but breaks it up. 
The Harrow, is the implement to follow the plow,, 
i. e. to be used after the plowing is done. All kinds ex¬ 
cept the old spike-tooth, are of recent origin. They pul¬ 
verize the soil and should always be used after plowing. 
The kind of harrow to be used depends upon the work to- 
