y shaped by growth. The curved pieces of
wood in the harness of a draught-horse, called the hames, to which the
traces are fastened, could be found in twisted growths, as could also
portions of ox-yokes. The gambrels used in slaughtering times,
hay-hooks, long-handled pothooks for brick ovens, could all be cut
ready-shaped.

The smaller underbrush and saplings had many uses. Sled and cart stakes
were cut from some; long bean-poles from others; specially straight
clean sticks were saved for whip-stocks. Sections of birch bark could be
bottomed and served for baskets, or for potash cans, while capital
feed-boxes could be made in the same way of sections cut from a hollow
hemlock. Elm rind and portions of brown ash butts were natural
materials for chair-seats and baskets, as were flags for door-mats.
Forked branches made geese and hog yokes. Hogs that ran at large had to
wear yokes. It was ordered that these yokes should measure as long as
twice and a half times the depth of the neck, while the bottom piece was
three times the width of the neck.

In the shaping of heavy and large vessels such as salt-mortars, pig
troughs, maple-sap troughs, the jack-knife was abandoned and the methods
of the Indians adopted. These vessels were burnt and scraped out of a
single log, and thus had a weighty stability and permanence. Wooden
bread troughs were also made from a single piece of wood. These were
oblong, trencher-shaped bowls about eighteen inches long; across the
trough ran lengthwise a stick or rod on which rested the sieve, searse,
or temse, when flour was sifted into the trough. The saying "set the
Thames (or temse) on fire," meant that hard work and active friction
would set the wooden temse on fire.

Sometimes the mould for an ox-bow was dug out of a log of wood. Oftener
a plank of wood was cut into the desired shape as a frame or mould, and
fastened to a heavy backboard. The ox-bow was steamed, placed in the
bow-mould, pinned in, and then carefully seasoned.

The boys whittled cheese-ladders, cheese-hoops, and red-cherry
butter-paddles for their mothers' dairy; also many parts of
cheese-presses and churns. To the toys enumerated by Rev. Mr. Pierpont,
they added box-traps and "figure 4" traps of various sizes for catching
vari-sized animals.

Many farm implements other than those already named were made, and many
portions of tools and implements; among them were shovels,
swingling-knives, sled-neaps, stanchions, handles