IMPLEMENTS FOR PLANTING.

George was determined to be a farmer. He was but twelve years of age, yet he felt sure that he knew his own mind. He said to himself and to his friends that life out of doors, life on a farm, was the best and healthiest kind of life. He declared that to raise the food of the world was the most important service that man could do for his fellow-beings.

The boy lived in a city. He had always lived in a city and had never seen a farm. He had never been away from home. His home was a flat, or apartment, occupying a portion of one floor of a ten-story block. His knowledge of life was limited entirely to city life. He had been to the park; he had seen there trees and shrubbery, grass and flowers. Yet he had never visited the park alone; he had never seen any of the work needed in caring for the trees and flowers. He knew absolutely nothing about gardening or farming; he could not tell the difference between a hoe and a rake; he would not be able to answer the simplest questions about farm life.

Yet George had decided to be a farmer, and he had made up his mind to study the subject of farming at once. He proposed to ask Uncle Ben all sorts of questions every chance he could get. He intended to obtain books from the library that would tell him what he needed to know. Oh, could he only go into the country, try for himself life upon a farm, and see with his own eyes what a farmer had to do!

So George went to work. He did not neglect his school duties, but carefully prepared his daily lessons. When these were done he was ready to study agriculture. He did not know where to begin with books, so he asked questions.

"Uncle Ben," he said one evening as the family was gathered around the library lamp, "how does it happen that a farmer sometimes raises tomatoes and sometimes potatoes? What does he do if he wants one rather than the other?"

"Well, George," was the laughing reply, "I think that you have much to learn before you make a successful farmer. Don't you know that if he wants potatoes he plants potatoes?"

"Why, I suppose so," said George. "Then if he desires apples, does he plant apples?"

"Hardly," said his uncle. "Seeds would be better than entire apples."

George was started and for the rest of the evening he asked no more questions, his whole attention being turned to the large encyclopedia on his knee. When next he plied his uncle with questions it was evident that he had already learned something.

"When a farmer plants a potato, he puts it in a hole and covers it up. I have read that he plows the ground first. What does he do that for?"

"For two reasons, I suppose," replied Uncle Ben. "The roots and sprouts grow better in a soil that has been softened. When the ground is unplowed, it is baked hard. Besides, plowing turns the soil over, brings new dirt to the top, and generally mixes it all together."

"Oh, yes!" said George. "Then I must learn about plowing first."

George obtained as good a knowledge of plows and tillage as was possible from books. In order fully to understand the subject, it would be necessary to see the plows and use them. But that could not come yet. The books told him that the earliest and simplest way to till the soil was with a spade. From them George learned, what most boys and girls know, what a spade was, and that a spade was all that was absolutely needed to soften the soil and prepare it for planting.

To spade a piece of ground is slow work; it is also hard work. Could not some method be devised so that the spading or tilling could be done by horses or oxen? This led to the invention of the plow. This was made thousands of years ago. The kooloo plow, still in use in India, was one of the earliest and was very rude. It was made entirely of wood, the sharp part of the plow being like a thorn in shape, but very thick and strong.

As the centuries went on, iron began to be used; and early in the history of iron it was applied to plows. They were still made of wood, but iron plates were placed over the wood, where the instrument tore into the ground. Later the plow itself was made of iron, leaving the handles still formed of wood. This iron plow would sometimes become covered with soil and so be almost useless. This was corrected by the use of steel shares instead of iron. This brought George to the modern plow.

George was not content with simply obtaining an idea about plows; he wished to know all that he could about them. He obtained books that gave complete accounts of the varieties of plows, the ways in which they were used, and the work which they should do. He learned that a plow should be fitted to its task. It should be as light as possible, easily drawn, and it should run with even steadiness, at a uniform depth. It should not only turn the soil over, but should thoroughly powder it and bury the weeds.

To his great surprise George also learned that some of the modern plows were as much superior to the ordinary plow as that was to the spade. The sulky plow is easier for the horses than the common plow; it makes furrows of different depths; and it has a seat for the farmer. Sometimes several plowshares are placed side by side and drawn by a large number of horses. This is called a gang plow. Steam and wind and water and even electricity are coming into use to furnish power for plows, in place of the animal power of horses.

"Well, Uncle Ben," said George one evening, "now I understand something about plowing and tillage. The next thing a farmer does in the spring is to plant his potatoes and corn, is it not?"

"Yes," was the reply.

"Well, then," said George, "that will not take me long to learn. All there is to do is to dig a hole, put in the potato, and cover it with earth."

"I am afraid that you will find that the job is not quite so simple as that. Has the farmer nothing to plant but potatoes?" asked the uncle.

"Yes," said the boy. "Corn and turnips and oats and wheat and pumpkins and lots of other things."

"Would you plant a kernel of corn in just the same way that you would a potato?"

"No, I suppose not," was the reply.

"And do you think that every farmer does all his planting by hand? Does he not have tools to help him?"

Thus George was started on a new line of thought. He read of the sower, as he slowly walks the length of the field, throwing the grain right and left. Even this work is better and more quickly done by machinery. The hand sower is a little machine which the farmer straps to his shoulders. The hopper of the sower is filled with grain and, as the handle is turned, the grain is scattered broadcast to as great a distance as possible. More saving of labor still is the horse sower, which is simply the hand sower on a larger scale. Sometimes the seed is inserted in the ground by means of grain drills, which deposit the grain more evenly and at the same time cover it with earth.

After learning how to sow seed, George began to inquire into the subject of planting. Many machines have been invented for this purpose which save much labor. The most important are the corn planter and the potato planter. Machines for planting other vegetables are much like these. The hand corn planter, which is used on small farms, is carried in the hand of the farmer. At each place where he wishes a hill of corn he strikes into the ground the planter, which leaves the kernels at the proper depth and covers them with soil. The horse corn planter is a form of grain drill, which does the same work as the hand planter.

The potato planter is a simple machine, though it does a variety of work. It cuts the potatoes into slices and drops them through a tube into a furrow which the plow-like part of the planter makes. The slices are dropped at regular spaces and are covered with dirt by the machine itself. In other words, the farmer puts potatoes in the hopper and drives the machine the length of the field. The planter does the rest of the work, saving the farmer the labor of slicing the potatoes, digging the hole, dropping the vegetable and covering it with earth.

All this and much more George learned during the next two weeks. Then he showed that he was ready for a new subject by asking his uncle what the farmer did between seedtime and harvest.

"I suppose," said the boy, "that most farmers get their planting done almost before summer begins. Then it must be some time before they begin to harvest the grain and dig the potatoes. What do they do all summer?"

"I think," replied his uncle, "that you will have to go into the country and see some things for yourself. As the school term is nearly finished, I believe that you must visit a good farmer and spend the summer and autumn with him. Then you will know something of a real farmer's life and work. But to answer your question by asking another, Did you ever hear of weeds?"

After that George asked few questions. He began to think that he was showing too much ignorance. From that evening until the end of June he had no thoughts but of the farm. He read but little and waited to study his subject at close hand. But he did discover that a farmer's life is not too easy in the summer. He learned that the ground must be kept free from weeds and continually loosened. He found that the farmer uses his hoe in deadly hostility to the weeds; that he makes his horse do a part of the work of hoeing; that the harrow and the cultivator keep the soil loose between the rows.

When the summer came, George felt that he had some knowledge of tillage, of sowing and planting, and of weeding; this was book knowledge. Now he hoped to get into the inside and learn something of the farmer's methods of harvesting. "Then," he thought, "I can be a farmer."