as farmers' daughters. These names, with half a million others, more or less worthy, coming from the agricultural districts, should stimulate the sons and daughters of farmers to stick to the farm and possess the land.

The women of this country have done much to make farm-homes attractive, creating a taste for the culture of fruits, flowers and ornamental grounds. The state took steps in the right direction when she opened the doors of her university, agricultural and horticultural schools to her sons and daughters alike. The state will be more than paid for this noble work in her future statesmen and citizens.

Pettis county possesses many advantages for the development of her natural resources. The value of land has gradually advanced until now it is more than thirty-fold its original price. The abundance of water and good drainage enhanced the value of land along the streams in the estimation of the early settlers. If the New Englander, or the man of the older states, was aware of the productive properties of Pettis county lands, he undoubtedly would leave his narrow acres of sterile soil, diligent toil and close habits, and come to this county where he would find broader fields and more generous soil. One glance over these fertile prairies, and the enjoyment of wholesome air and good society, would convince the man most deeply wedded to the sterile, unproductive soil of the older states. These beautiful, rich, rolling prairies, nature's own pastures, dotted with springs and checked with perpetual rivulets, exposing soils half a fathom deep, can be made, by a small outlay, a perfect garden, producing a bountiful supply of all sorts of fruits, besides the immense yields of corn, wheat, and other cereals.

In this thesis we give a comprehensive view of agronomy from its early steps to the present time. Once having lived on the farm the writer has found but little difficulty in presenting the early modes of farming and the implements used.

In 1818, when the first settlers set foot on this soil, they found a vast wilderness of grasses on the prairies, and in the woodlands thick clusters. of all sorts of vines and underbrush. Annually the mighty flames of fire would sweep over the prairies, leaving behind them a blackened plain; nor did the rushing fires stop with the fertile glades, but often caught from tree top to tree top, wrapping miles of timber in one vast conflagration. On account of these forest fires, the timber was kept closely confined to the creeks, lakes and places where the fire fiend had no sway. No record can tell when these prairies received the first fire, for hundreds of years no doubt have elapsed since.

A class of human beings tilled the soil to some extent long before the white man came to the west. The implements of the early tillers of the soil are occasionally found in some parts of this, as well as in many parts

of the state, often imbedded in the soil over which trees of many centuries have grown. The only implements left are those of stone. These are supposed to have been fastened to a piece of wood and used as a sort of hoe. The wooden implements of a later day used among some tribes of the American Indians, were forked sticks, sharpened by stone axes. No animals were domesticated and utilized in cultivating the patches of the aborigines. The squaws were the operators, and acted the double part of team and driver. The agricultural habits of the Indians have been gradually superseded by those of his pale-faced brethren, so that now the most savage tribes are laying aside the tomahawk and bow for improved agricultural implements.

When the early pioneers came to Pettis county, they settled along the small streams for the double purpose of building log cabins, making rails, improving a farm, which was most practical and congenial to their taste, since many of them had come from timbered states. With them it was impossible to break the turf of the prairie land with the plows of that age. Nothing more was contemplated the first few years, than fencing a few acres, raising some corn and spending the balance of the time in hunting. Indeed this was enough, for the land must be grubbed, planted and cultivated, and the only implements in use were the bull-tongue and colter plows and the grubbing hoe. The plows were drawn by oxen, steady, slow, and sure. Each succeeding year more land was opened up, and so by the time a farmer owned twenty-five acres of cultivated land, he had more than he could manage. In those days but few employed help, except in making rails. Some of the best and most influential old citizens of to-day can rehearse the manner in which they made rails. However, railsplitting was an avocation in which large numbers of hardy young men of poor parentage often engaged, and were paid on the average one dollar and their board for a hundred rails. From this business some have grown up wealthy. In early days there was no need of fenced pastures, except to confine an animal for special use, and stock of all kinds ran loose on the prairies at all seasons of the year. During farming season the plow animals were looked up every morning and driven from the prairies of high grass, and the pioneer farmer often commenced his work, wet to the waist from the dewy grass.

The first agricultural implements used here were the bull-tongue, colter, wooden mold-board and the single shovel plows. A rudely constructed wooden harrow and the top of a tree for a brush, were used to level and pulverize the ground. These implements, with the addition of the hoe, continued to be the pioneer's only reliance for farming utensils the first few years. A brief description of some of these implements will not be amiss. The bull-tongue plow, so named on account of its strength, having a steel share shaped somewhat like a bull's tongue, is the outgrowth

of the most ancient plows. The share of this plow is twelve to twenty inches in length, three to six in width, about an inch in thickness, and tapering to the apex, being well adapted to the service of tearing up huge roots and stirring the ground among stumps. This is bolted to an upright piece, mortised and braced in a beam. A strong iron clevis is fastened at the end of the beam by a pin, attaching a heavy chain, passing between the two oxen and fastened in the ring and staple of the ox-yoke. The handles were made of tough wood, fastened to the beam and braced by cross-bars. The wooden mold-board plow is better imagined than described. The present turning plows are improvements on the old cary and wooden mold-board plows. The share of this plow was steel. The farmer of to-day can imagine the inconvenience of tilling the soil with this plow, stopping every few minutes to use a paddle to clear the dirt from the wooden mold-board. The old single shovel plow was constructed somewhat on the plan of the bull-tongue and colter plows, which was kept in use longer on account of its adaptability to stir the soil where the ground was cleared of roots and stumps, checking the ground for planting, and wherever light plowing was demanded.

The share of the shovel ranged from six to eight inches in breadth and was about the same in length with the addition of the point. This plow was usually drawn by a single horse or an ox. The work was slow, and many farmers, in order to prevent their teams from nipping too much of the growing grain, kept muzzles made of splints and bark on the plowanimals.

The first crops were principally corn. Oats, wheat, hemp, flax and rye were raised. The tame grasses were not cultivated. The wild grass was considered good for all stock and hundreds of tons of prairie hay were annually mown by hand and stacked for the winter feed. At an early day spring and fall wheat were both tried. The smut and the accumulation of chintz bugs on spring wheat early convinced the farmers. of this section that it was an unprofitable crop. Fall wheat, although not extensively raised, has generally done well.

With the early farmers, corn was the staple product, and became the staff of life for man and beast, and the failure of the corn crop brought almost a famine. On corn, the hardy settlers depended for Johnny cake, hominy, hasty pudding, and succotash. Corn was the principal feed for horses, swine, cattle, and sheep. In the early autumn, just as soon as the ears had sufficiently ripened, the farmer with his wife and family entered the corn field, and stripped the blades from the ear down, after which they were cured, bound into bundles, and stacked as provender for winter use. The tops of the stalks were cut above the ear, bound into bundles and shocked for the cattle. After the era of saving corn fodder in this way, it became a prevailing custom to cut the corn from the ground, and

put it into shocks sixteen hills square. For this work a corn-cutter was paid from seven to ten cents a shock. This custom prevails now in some localities.

The soils of Pettis county are divided into three distinct classes, commonly known as limestone soil, sandy soil, and mulatto clay. The prairie land differs from the wood land mostly in its productions. The greater portion of the prairie lands of the county have a rich, black alluvial, strong in sediment of lime, very friable, easily handled, and form a soil of eighteen to thirty inches in thickness. About five-sixths of the land of the county is prairie. The timber soils along the bluffs and hillsides are principally light and underlaid with fine deposits of limestone, varying in color, depth and consistency, while the soils of the bottoms and valleys are composed of dark alluvial deposits of a very productive nature. The bottoms of the timber land are very valuable when once in cultivation. They are practically inexhaustible, and, like the black alluvial of the upland prairies, yield large crops of corn, wheat, grasses, vegetables, and in fact produce anything that grows in this latitude. The more con sistent oak, hickory and sassafras upland soils are generally of a reddish or grayish hue, rich in lime, magnesia, humus, and other fine productive elements, and are among the best tobacco and fruit soils of the state. The lighter and thinner jack oak soils, which cover but a minimum of the woodlands, are of little value except pasturage, yielding annually a fine undergrowth of tall succulent wild grasses, well suited for sheep and goats. The sub-soils of the prairies, as well as the better white oak and hickory soils, are very largely made of silicious clays and marls, deep and very rich, and wherever thrown up to the influence of the sun and air, readily disintegrate to the softness of ashes, and produce a good growth of vegetation. These lands are absolutely imperishable. With such valuable constitutents as silica, lime, magnesia carbonate, lime phosphate, alumina, and other organic matter, a basis of agricultural wealth is formed for the deep and more thorough cultivators of the soil in the future, in comparison with which the farmer's artificial fertilizers are hardly worthy of mention. These surface and sub-soils give together the widest known range of production in American agronomy.

The size of farms vary according to the wealth and ability to carry on the farm. It is the opinion of many of the best farmers of this age that about one-half of the agricultural lands are poorly cultivated, on account of many farmers having charge of more land than they are able to manage. Pettis county has a few farms containing upwards of 600 acres, and very many 500 acres; however, the average farms are about 300 acres in Corn and grasses appear to be the most profitable growth of the farm. Major Wm. Gentry and Capt. Sam'l Shanks are among the large

area.