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Seed-drill.
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the weight to hang first over one and then over the other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair of rows.


Fig. 131.— Double row seed-drill, just returning from the fields to the village home.


Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed them ranging between 20 and 100, the distance between the rows and between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number of stalks per hill where the water capacity of the soil was large, where the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil was evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of stooling but we have little doubt that judgment was exercised in planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture was available. In the piece just referred to, in the illustration, an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a head varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of 12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field would yield about twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our interpreter, whose parents lived near Kaomi, four stations further west, stated that in 1901,