This instrument is preferable to the spade, even for digging over open compartments, for the soil can be reversed with it as easily as with the spade; the labour is diminished, and the pulverization of the soil is more effectual. (See Digging.) For stirring the soil in plantations, shrubberies, and fruit borders, a two-pronged fork is often employed, but that with three prongs is quite as unobjectionable, and a multiplicity of tools is an expensive folly. Dr. Yelloly's fork is certainly a good working implement. Its entire length, three feet three and a half inches; handle's length, two feet two inches; its diameter one and a half inch; width of the entire prongs seven inches at the top; width at the points six inches; prongs thirteen and a half inches long, and at the top seven-eighths of an inch square, tapering to a point. The straps fixing the head to the handle are eleven inches long, two inches wide, and half an inch thick, feathering off; weight of fork, eight pounds.

Leaf-Fork

Mr. Toward, of Bagshot Park, describes a very serviceable implement of this kind; he says - "One person with this implement will take up with greater facility more leaves than two persons could do with any other tool. It is simply a large four-tined fork, made of wood, shod with iron; the tines are eighteen inches long, and are morticed into a head about seven- teen inches long, and one and a half inch by two and a quarter inches thick. The tines are one inch in width, and one and a half inch in depth at the head, gradually tapering to a point with a curve or bend upwards. The wood of which they are formed ought to be hard and tough; either oak or ash will do, but the Robi- nia Psuedo-Acacia is preferable to ei- ther. The head should be made of ash, with a handle of the same, and should be two feet four inches long. Its re- commendations are its size and lightness, the leaves also do not hang upon it as on a common fork, the large size of the tines tearing them asunder." - Gard. Chron.