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Show come exceedingly abundant and destructive. de-structive. Rats migrate from place? where food is scarce to places where it is plentiful. Abundant food in the new locality causes abnormal reproduction, repro-duction, the effect of which in a short time is that of a sudden invasion by a vast horde'of rats. Other movements of rats are local and seasonal in occurrence. An exodus exo-dus takes place every spring from cities and villages to river banks an6 farmsteads in the surrounding country7, coun-try7, and is followed by a return mi- gration in the autumn. This phenomenon, phenom-enon, which has been observed almost everywhere, explains why rats are more abundant in towns during the cold season and in larger numbers in the country during the summer. That all rodent destruction is properly prop-erly the business of the community, and that this must be recognized before be-fore substantial progress is made, is asserted by the department investigators. MACHINERY Use of Modern Implements Is One Way to Increase Crops in Time of Emergency. IM EFFICIENCY OF WORKER i United States Department of Agriculture Agricul-ture Recommends That Farmers . Co-operate in Purchase of Various Va-rious Farm Outfits. Work which Is generally clone in some part of the country with the aid of machines that greatly increase the efficiency of the man employed is still largely done by hand in other parts. Machinery for the most of the work in connection with preparing and tilling the soil is available in many sizes, and frequently two or more outfits, each requiring the time of one man, are seen working in the same field on operations op-erations for which implements of two or three times the, size of those used could be employed with just as satisfactory satis-factory results. There are few farm horses which a' driver of ordinary intelligence in-telligence cannot train to work In large teams in a few days' time, and most of the larger Implements are little lit-tle If any more complicated or difficult diffi-cult to handle than the small ones for the same work. Machinery Profitable. Where the farm is large, and It Is not possible to procure sufficient labor, specialists of the United States department de-partment of agriculture say it is more profitable, as well as patriotic, to install in-stall machinery which will enable the operator to plant, cultivate, and har vest a full acreage' of the . crops best suited to his land and the needs of his country, than to let some of the land lie idle, or, at best, have It prepared pre-pared and worked poorly, and the crops out of season. In Farmers' Bulletin 9S9, "Better Use of Man Labor on the Farm," just Issued by the United States department depart-ment of agriculture, photographs of actual farm scenes are printed to show that in many cases work can be j doubled by the use of larger implements imple-ments and greater motive power, and I sometimes the gain ts considerably more than that. If the nature of the work and the machinery for doing It are such that the best implements will Increase the efficiency of the worker by only 50 or 75 per cent their j use .may make possible an increase in acreage by just that amount and at j least will enable the farmer to do j his work In less time and allow him to take better advantage of good weather weath-er if the season is unfavorable Combining to Purchase Machinery. Can all farmers afford to buy extra horses and larger implements to save man labor? Of course those whose farms require but one or two horses to do the ordinary work seldom can afford to do so. But they can secure this additional help by combining to purchase larger machinery, and doubling doub-ling up their, teams to operate It; or one, usually more skilled In operating machinery, or better able to purchase It, may own the larger Implements, anil do the work for several neighbor farmers, besides his own, to the advantage ad-vantage of all concerned. Both these methods have been tried out In many localities with mowers, harvesters, tractors, thrashing machines, and other farm machinery. How Rats Migrate. Migrations of rats from one locality local-ity to another probably are due chiefly to food conditions, say Investigators of the United Slates .department of agriculture. After years In which the pesls are comparatively scarce In n rural neighborhood they suddenly bo- |