converted to viands as delicious to the taste of plants, as was the fabled ambrosia of mythology to the palates of the gods. Indeed, the old system of restoring worn lands, to fertility by fallowing, was simply leaving them for a season, to the action of these and kindred elements.

And, through these same passages, is also admitted the solar heat, without whose presence no seed can germinate and no plant can grow.

4. Through these enter also the rains, rich in fertilizing matters, to be deposited in the soil as they percolate through it in search of the channels which are to bear them home to the ocean, from whose heaving bosom they have started on their beneficent circuits. Plowing, therefore, often performs the office of drainage, removing from compact soils the water whose prolonged presence would prove incompatible with a flourishing vegetation.

5. The plow is the best instrument with which to bury beneath the surface of our fields the manure we spread upon them for their enrichment and the weeds, which, though a nuisance above ground, when properly covered, soon rot and add to their fertility.

6. We plow, also, to invert the soil, thereby burying in the furrows the worn stratum at the surface, and replacing it with a fresh one from below; so that, during the intervals of plowing, there have been alternate periods of rest and recuperation, similar in some degree to the fallowing to which previous allusion has been made. If at the time of invasion the field be in turf, the grass roots turned under, by their gradual decomposition, enrich what then becomes the bottom soil, as well and perhaps better than it can be done in any other way; so that when, in turn, this comes again to the surface, it presents itself in part restored and richer than when buried. In short, repeated plowings are. repeated transfers of the more or less exhausted top layers of soil to the bottoms of the furrows, and of the partially recuperated bottom strata to the surface.

7. We sometimes plow to intermix soils of different qualities, lying in juxtaposition but separate and distinct from one another. If, at any time we can, in this way, mix porous and barren sand with compact and retentive clay, we greatly improve the physical texture of the soil, and render land, before almost worthless, of high value; so that where, as in some of our drained low grounds, a thin stratum of muck is underlaid by sand, the simple mixing

by the plow of the two produces a soil that will remain productive without manure for generations. The forking over and loading and drawing and spreading of manure is a laborious business, the most so, perhaps, of any upon the farm. Whenever, therefore, we can make the plow supersede the dung cart, we had better improve the opportunity and save thereby many a hardearned dollar and many a back-ache.

Such, my friends, are some of the reasons which induce us to plow our fields: to open through their soils passages for the admission of air, warmth and moisture; to loosen them, in order that plant roots may extend themselves without obstruction; to admit through them the free passage of the rains that fall upon them; to bury beneath their surface the manures we spread upon them and the weeds; to bring, by inversion, into alternate use their upper and lower strata, and to intermix the different constituents of which they are composed. Others still there are but we have not time to consider them here.

II.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLOW.

Now what kind of a plow do we need to effect these purposes most successfully and economically?

1. We want one adapted to the work it is called upon to perform. We can break up our meadows with a seed plow, and we can bury the manure we spread upon them with a sod plough, but it would be as uneconomial as foolish thus to do. And yet, how few of us are careful to use only the plow best adapted to the work we have at hand! We sin, however, less in this particular than the generations that have preceded us. It is wonderful to see with what implements these have wrought. We can trace mention of the plow down through all the centuries, from the time when, eighteen hundred years before the Christian era, "Job's oxen were plowing and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away." We find Elisha "plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he with the twelfth," and Cincinnatus leaving his plow in the field for the dictatorship of Rome, and our own gallant Putnam, stopping his team in mid furrow, that he may seize his sword and hasten to Bunker Hill, at the reveille of our Revolutionary war.

But what plows were those with which these great worthies pulverized their soils?

a

d

FIG. 1. Ancient Plow of Asia Minor.

At first, the plow was a forked stick, one prong, cut short, answering for the share, and the other for the beam, which was attached to the yoke by a short pin in front, and guided by a straight standard behind.

FIG. 2. Ancient Egyptian Plow.

As time passed on, and experience ripened, a rude mould board was added, and by and by a colter and at length a wheel.

The drawings and descriptions that have come down to us from antiquity show conclusively that the early plowman sought merely to root up the ground, and attempted nothing like a well turned furrow. Indeed, it was not until a time comparatively recent, that the plow approximated the shape it now bears, or produced work akin to what we are accustomed to see.

With the exception of the share, sole and colter, it was constructed of wood, and an absurd prejudice was for a long time more or less common among English farmers that an iron mould board poisoned the soil. Indeed, the first cast iron plow made in this country, by Charles Newbold, of New Jersey, dates only from 1797. This was cast in a single piece, and nearly a quarter of a century elapsed before Jethro Wood, in 1819, made the next important advance, by making iron plows in sections, fastened together as is now common.

And, until the opening of the present century, it was constructed upon no settled principles by persons whose skill was entirely empirical; who sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed in producing successful implements, and whose art, such as it was, being as ephemeral as themselves, died with them.

But near the close of the last century our distinguished countrymen, Thomas Jefferson, in a communication to the French Institute, announced to the world a principle by which mould boards exactly alike, could be made, in any number, and by per

sons unknown to each other, viz: by the combination, in a curve, of the adjoining faces of two wedges, one to act vertically and lift the furrow slice, and the other laterally and turn it.

This was the first entrance upon solid ground in the career of plow-making, and from this commencement has been gradually developed the settled rules now. allowed in the business.

Four distinct and very important offices attach to the plow, viz: to cut, raise, turn and pulverize the soil. The excellence of any particular plow is measured by the ease and perfection with which it accomplishes these four things.

The cutting edges therefore should be made of such material as to insure their being easily kept sharp, that they may sever the furrow slice with the least possible resistance, while the feather should be of such a length as to cut so much only of this from its bed as may be necessary, a shoulder being always left uncut, on which it may turn without slipping from its position. These edges should also be adjusted as to work in precisely the right lines, and allow the plow to be held vertically, otherwise it will veer from its true course, or be kept upon it only by an increase of its draft. For instance, if the edge of the colter inclines to the left, even in a slight degree, the tendency of the plow will be to run too much to land, and the narrow slice can only be kept of proper width by tilting the plow in the same direction and crowding its left side against the land, which will enhance seriously the friction of its motion and increase its draft.

This tipping of a plow one way or another, particularly in deep furrows, not only makes hard work for the plowman, but increases unmercifully the burden of his team; and yet, it is a practice which is very common and to which we are wont to give but little thought. We complain frequently, on our own account,