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