Machinery is now used to plant potatoes; grain, cotton, and other farm products are sown automatically.

The husking bees that formed one of our social diversions in Civil War days have disappeared, for particular machines now rip the husks off the ears.

Horse hay-forks and horse hayrakes have supplanted manual labor.

The mere names of scores of modern instruments of farming, all unknown in Civil War days--hay carriers, hay loaders, hay stackers, manure spreaders, horse corn planters, corn drills, disk harrows, disk ploughs, steam ploughs, tractors, and the like--give some suggestion of the extent to which America has made mechanical the most ancient of occupations.

In thus transforming agriculture, we have developed not only our own Western plains, but we have created new countries.