WHIPPLETREES AND DRAUGHT.

BY M. MILES.

From the earliest times of which we have any record, the superior strength of animals has been made use of by man in work.

The ox and the ass were first used as beasts of burden and afterwards for purposes of draught. The horse, from its greater intelligence and tractability, was for a long time exempt from the ordinary labor required of the animals mentioned, and kept for the personal use of its master in war or in moving from place to place.

The Anglo Saxons prohibited the use of the horse in field labor, the ox being exclusively used for that purpose.

On a piece of "tapestry, woven at Bayonne in the time of William the Conqueror (A. D. 1066), there is the figure of a man driving a horse attached to a harrow. This is the earliest notice we have of the use of the horse in field labor."

A history of the means employed from time to time in harnessing animals to the load to be moved would be of considerable interest; but we unfortunately lack the materials required in its compilation.

The first methods of attachment, were undoubtedly rude and imperfect; the only consideration being to accomplish the end in the simplest manner, regardless of the comfort of the animals.

"It was a law of the early Britons that no one should guide a plow until he could make one, and that the driver should make the traces by which it was drawn of withs or twisted willows."

In many places withs were used for attaching the tails of animals to the plow or harrow. "In 1610, Mr. Ledwich says,

ten shillings were levied for every plow drawn by the tail in Ulster, There were 1,740 forfeitures, amounting to £870." (Dutton's Survey of Galway, p. 83.)

A law of the Irish Parliament (11 and 12 Car. 11, c. 15), in 1634 entitled "An act against plowing by the tayle, etc.," declared that "in many places of this Kingdome there hath been a long time used a barbarous custome of plowing, harrowing, drawing, and working with horses, mares, geldings, garrans, and colts by the taile, whereby (besides the cruelty used to the beasts) the breed of horses is much impaired in this Kingdome."

"These wretched practices are then declared illegal and to be punishable by fine and imprisonment."

This law with its penalties did not, however, prevent the evil. Mr. C. Varley, a resident of Ireland, in his New System of Husbandry, 1774, says: "I have very often seen a mare and her offspring-a three-year old, two-year old, and one-year old colt,-plowing all abreast, two going upon the ploughed land and two upon the unploughed land, with neither hemp nor iron about them; their whole gearing consisted of a withy or twisted stick tied to the hair of the horse's tail and so through a hole made in a long pole or stick which reached the breadth of the four horses and served by the way of a swingletree, which pole is fastened in the middle by another withy to a hole bored in the end of the plough beam."

Arthur Young in his Tour of Ireland, 1776, when in Ulster, says: "They plough all with horses three or four in a plough and all abreast. Here let it be remarked that they very commonly plough and with their horses DRAWING BY THE TAIL,— it is done every season. Nothing can put them beside this, and they insist, that take a horse tired in traces and put him to work by the tail, he will draw better,-quite fresh again. Indignant reader! this is no jest of mine, but cruel, stubborn, barbarous truth. It is so all over Cavan."

In speaking of another locality in Ireland, the same writer says: "They harrow by the tail,-item, the fellow who leads.

the horses of a plow walks backward before them the whole day long, and in order to make them advance strikes them in the face."

McDonald, in his Survey of the Hebrides in 1808, says the common practice was to fasten horses and colts by the tail to the harrow. "In Wales the man who led the horses or oxen (of which from four to six were used), walked backward. The cattle were fastened with withs to a long whippletree, three abreast, the outside ones walking respectively on the ploughed and unploughed land, while the center ones walked in the furrow."

The common use of withs in harnessing the team gave rise to names that were used after the withs were replaced by better materials,—and it is not improbable that terms now in use were derived from them.

The womb-withy (belly-with) became wamb-tye or wantye, and the withentrees, witten-trees, and swingle-trees were what we now call whiffletrees and whippletrees, or in an abreviated form, doubletrees and singletrees.

The double whippletree, as now used, is intended to equalize the work performed by horses working in pairs. In construction, its true purpose of equalizing the draught is often lost sight of in the attempts to secure the greatest strength of timber to meet the resistance.

To secure an equal division of the work performed, in all positions of the doubletree, the draught pins must be in the same line.

Diagram No. 1 shows the working of a doubletree properly constructed, with the main draught pin in line with the whippletree pins.

No. 1.

D

When the doubletree is at right angles to the line of draught (as shown on the diagram by the black lines), if lines are drawn from the whippletree pins parallel to the center line. they will be equidistant from it, as shown by the equal length of the lines A and B.

When the double tree is not at right angles to the line of draught (as shown on the diagram by the dotted lines), if lines are drawn in the same manner from the whippletree pins they will be nearer the center line, but still equidistant from it, as shown by the equal length of the lines c and D.

In both cases the work performed by each horse will be the

same.

With a doubletree thus made it will be readily seen that it makes no difference whether one horse is ahead of the other or not.

In a very common form of the doubletree we find the main draught pin is placed near the front edge, and the whippletree pins are placed near the rear edge, thus securing the greatest strength of the timber.

An examination of a large number of doubletrees in different parts of the country shows this to be a form quite generally adopted; the prominent idea in construction being, apparently, to obtain the greatest strength with the smallest amount of material. When so made, if the doubletree is at right angles to the line of draught, the force exerted by each animal will be the same, but in all other positions it will be unequal.

It will, perhaps, be generally admitted that with ordinary teams, in the hands of careless or unexperienced drivers, the doubletree will seldom be at right angles to the line of draught, --the position required for equalizing the draught.

The effect of placing the main draught pin in front of a line drawn between the two whippletree pins is shown in diagram No. 2.