The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-03-20
HOW THEY TILL THE SOIL.


Foreign Countries.
Worlds Work.
Perhaps the most interesting implement
used by French plowmen is the bascule.
This pillow is sometimes eighteen feet long
and OF sufficient strength to cut furrow
thirty inches deep. 1t is used in blowing for
vines and in cutting drains. 1t is used oc-
casionally also by hop farmers potato
growers and gardeners. Near Paris are
municipal gardens fortified with the city
sewage, and these gardens are periodically
plowed with the bascule One purpose of
blowing is to let air into the soil, hence the
deeper the ground is worked the more air ii
VIII contain. French farmers, therefore.
sometimes attach a hook to their stirring
plows which acts effectively as a subsoiler.
In many European countries the soil be-
comes very hard. Fields newly plowed
have at times Jumps a foot thick that can
hardly be crushed with the heel For this
held to their course with difficulty. The
clods are finally reduced by rains. and
when sowing time comes the fields lie in
loose ridges. These ridges are easily broken
down with a cultivator and converted into
farm in France cannot afford to have it
cut up with dead burrows or checkered with
back burrows. To avoid this the French
pillow Is made double. This pillow is COM
posite, being right and a left or a reversi-
bic tool, and the team goes back and forth
The field is finished with only one back fur
row and finish furrow at the hedge.
French plow horses are stations and are
hitched tandem. 1t is not uncommon to see
three men and three horses work one pillow.
one man drives, another manages the pillow.
t Wnie t third follows with spade to dig up
full acre day. The American plow is
evidently not adapted to French custom. If
1t were our exports of plows TO that country
would soon reach prodigious invoices.
The French peasant loves his home farm.
He seldom migrates. The corners OF his
farm are not right angles. He does not
work to a line like the American. He in
herits taste for the haphazard, the pic
turesque, and he delights in a free-hand
way or doing things. He cultivates the eye.
This makes him an artist. For centuries
poets and painters have celebrated the
grotesque beauty of rural France. Libraries
and galleries everywhere abound with these
works But not one of them attracts more
attention than Rosa Bonheur's old-time
blowing scene in Nivernais.
In the valley of the GuadalQuivir a trav
eler may still see type of the primitive
plow of Asia. In the old days it was made
of CROCHET. Nowadays it is made of two
crotchets; one IS shod with chisel of iron
for the pillow, the other is bound in rawhide
for the handles. Bullocks are yoked to the
Implement. In many parts OF Europe oxen
are broken to draw from the horns, but
these Spanish and Portuguese cattle gener-
ally draw from the neck, to which a yoke
is fitted with bows. These Jokes are some
times twenty inches high and only two or
three inches thick. The broad surfaces are
not infrequently hand carved in designs
There may be vines and clusters of grapes
and growing corn and the bearded heads of
wheat. Sometimes these decorations are
inspired by religious subjects. The comfort
and capacity OF the OK are sacrificed to
satisfy the artistic taste of the peasant.
And this makes il difficult, as one might
imagine, to sell many American plows in
Spain.
In Germany the plow is nearly always
geared to a truck. 1t is heavy and awk-
ward, but strong. Steers and cows are not
infrequently used for power. The work is
done slowly, but il is done well. In Switz-
erland it is not unusual to see a cast iron
pillow made reversible similar to the side
difference between the Flnglish and German
pillow except that the rod breaker is COM
mon in the former country. The Asiatic
pillow Is still very primitive. German manu-
facturers have studied these conditions and
are. selling large shipments in Russia, ST.
berfa and Siam. They retail a plow In
Odessa for s..
Prof Patrick Geddis, of Edinburgh, once
said that IL Is easy to tell the character OF
a people by the character of their plows.
The Chinaman stirs the soil for his rice
his foot The American breaks up his
ground with three horses and plants his
cornfield with two horses. The stature of
the Chnaman is four feet, that of the
American is six feet. Except in a small
Manchurian territory about Hardin, where
a small group of modern grist mills has
been built, Chinese farmers can hardly be
induced to try an American pillow. 1t is
said that English pillow samples have lain
in Mongolia untouched for twenty years.
AT home the manufacturer fashions his
90 ctrif thn acfa Of h rr1Sf
The commercial traveller calls upon the
trade who want his goods; the retailer
stocks with what his customers want rather
than with what they ought have. Foreign
trade Is conducted after the same plan.