pread evenly as it falls,
leaving no bare spaces between the cast from the hand or between the
strips sown at one time. Hand sowing, especially in the Western States,
is in a sense a lost art, owing to the extent to which machine sowing is
practised; nevertheless, it is an accomplishment which every farmer
should possess, since it will oftentimes be found very convenient when
sowing small quantities of seed, and in sowing seeds in mixtures which
cannot be so well sown by machines.

Hand machines are of various kinds. Those most in favor for ordinary
sowing consist of a seeder wheeled over the ground on a frame resembling
that of a wheelbarrow. It sows about 12 feet in width at each cast of
the seed. It enables the sower to sow the seed while considerable wind
is blowing and to sow it quite evenly, but it is not adapted to the
sowing of all kinds of grass and clover mixtures, which it may be
desirable to sow together, since they do not always feed out evenly,
owing to a difference in size, in weight, in shape and in the character
of the covering.

When clover seed is sown with the grain drill, it is sometimes sown
separately from grain; that is, without a nurse crop, and is deposited
in the soil by the same tubes. But it is only some makes of drills that
will do this. Clover seed, and especially alfalfa, may be thus sown with
much advantage on certain of the Western and Southern soils, especially
on those that are light and open in character, and when the seed is to
be put in without a nurse crop. Eastern soils are usually too heavy to
admit of depositing the seed thus deeply, but to this there are some
exceptions.

When sown with a nurse crop, the seed is in some instances mixed with
the grain before it is sown. In some instances it is mixed before it is
brought to the field. At other times it is added when the grain has been
put in the seed-box of the drill. This method of sowing is adapted to
certain soils of the Western prairies and to very open soils in some
other localities, but under average conditions it buries seeds too
deeply. There is the further objection that they all grow in the line of
the grain plants and are more shaded than they would be otherwise.
Nevertheless, under some conditions this method of sowing the plants is
usually satisfactory.

One of the most satisfactory methods of sowing clover seeds along with a
nurse crop is to sow the clover with a "seeder attachment;" that is, an
attachment for