Agriculture, With A Brief Mention Of Our Domestic Animals.

The harrow was early introduced, since Gabriel Thomas, in 1698, refers to that implement. "Their ground," he states, "is harrowed with wooden tyned harrows, twice over in a place is sufficient." And in colonial days, as was practiced until about the beginning of this century, the harvests were reaped by the sickle, all hands - men, women, and children - laboring in the fields from sunrise to sunset, with a short interval at noon for rest. The wages then, as contrasted with those at present paid for such work, were very low, but a pint flask of whiskey was always given each hand in the morning. It was severe toil, the position in reaping requiring the bending over of the body, the right arm swinging the sickle, and the left gathering the bunches of grain, which were thrown into heaps and bound into sheaves. The custom previous to the Revolutionary war was for the reaper to take two corn rows, cutting through always in one direction, and then, with his sickle on his shoulder, binding the sheaves as he came back. Twenty-five or thirty dozen was an ordinary day's work, but sometimes a rapid hand would reach forty dozen.

It is not surprising that redemption servants, many of whom had been reared in the cities of the old world, frequently ran away from their masters before the period of their indenture had expired, to avoid the incessant labor which farming then entailed upon them. Scythes were, of course, in use in our earliest annals, but it was not until the beginning of the present century that the cradle, with its many fingers, began to take the place of the sickle and the reaping-hook, and although there were men who predicted that it would never be brought into general use, as was the case in more recent times with the reaping-machine, it soon won its way to popular favor. Every man of middle age can recall, when the harvest was ready for reaping, how all the able-bodied men on the farm, together with several additional hands hired for the occasion, would take their stations, the man at the extreme right starting ahead of the one to his left, and the latter following in order until, with a swinging motion, all at the same time would cut a swath from five to six feet in width from one side of the field to the other, while frequent pauses would be made to sharpen the scythe, the stone for the purpose being carried in a leather girdle around the waist of the reaper. The sound made by the stone on the steel blade would be heard at considerable distance.

In early times, when the bundles were ready to be taken to the barn or stack they were loaded on sleds, and in that manner transported thither. Bishop² informs us that in 1750 only the best farmers had carts on their farms, while the most of them used sleds both in summer and winter, a statement corroborated by William Worrall, of Ridley, who, speaking of the older manners about the middle of the last century, says "there were no carts, much less pleasure carriages. They hauled their grain on sleds to the stacks, where a temporary threshing floor was erected." On these floors the grain was thrashed out by horses, which were driven in a circle, and after the heads were deemed to have been well cleared of the seed the straw was thrown to one side with forks and the grain swept up, ready for another lot of bundles to be unbound and submitted to a like process. In the barns, however, the thrashing was usually done with the flail, and on a still day the sound of the heavy thump of the oaken breaker on the floor, which acted like a drum, could be heard a long way off. In 1770, John Clayton doubtless of this county, who had invented a machine for thrashing wheat, received from the colonial government the exclusive privilege of making and selling this machine within this province.³ This was sixteen years before the thrasher invented for the same purpose by Andrew Meikler, of Scotland, and the one still used in England, was patented. We have no description of Clayton's invention nor of the manner in which it was received by the farmers, who at that time were loath to take hold of new ideas, believing that agriculture was so thoroughly understood that nothing, let it promise never so much in saving of time or labor, was worth investigation.

³ Colonial Records, vol. ix. p. 698.

I have been unable to ascertain when the fan was first used to winnow cereals, but in the early days, in all probability, the grain was held in the hand, which was shaken as the contents were permitted to fall through the fingers, so that the breeze might blow the chaff away from the heavy seeds, which fell directly to the ground, in the same manner that many of the aborigines now employ to separate the grain from the chaff. It is known that previous to the Revolution fans were in use in Chester County, although the work was not performed as thoroughly as is now done by the modern machines.

In the old colonial days the woodland was brought into condition for tillage by girdling the trees, and two men could thus destroy the forest on twenty or thirty acres in one year. There was little underbrush, owing to the custom among the Indians, annually in the fall, of setting fire to the grass and leaves in the woods, so that "a cart or wain," we are told by Gabriel Thomas,