36 BOAED OP AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Gould. What we want is to do the whole business 

 with the plow. What is the object we have in view when we 

 put the plow into the ground ? It is to pulverize the soil. 

 How does the plow pulverize the soil ? That is the question 

 which we want to solve, in order to ascertain what is the true 

 plow to use, for everybody wishes to supersede the necessity 

 for so much harrowing. Now, the way in which the plow 

 cracks the soil and reduces it to powder is this. Every suc- 

 cessive sheet of the soil must be made to turn in a certain 

 curve, in such a way that one portion of the sheet shall travel 

 faster than the other. [The speaker illustrated by diagrams 

 on the blackboard the operation of the true plow, in cutting 

 the furrow and disintegrating the soil.] The action of the 

 true plow is to convert the whole furrow slice into powder. 

 You can hardly, by the action of the harrow, more thoroughly 

 disintegrate it. 



Unfortunately, there is a tendency among plow-makers to 

 fall into this mistake. When a farmer goes to one of them, 

 lie is assured that his particular plow will go through the 

 ground and turn over the furrow with less, or no more labor, 

 than any other, and the farmer is very ready to take it. He 

 looks at nothing beyond the question whether the plow will 

 run easily through the furrow. Gentlemen, I believe that is 

 a great mistake, because the plows that run easiest are those 

 which have the least of these bending qualities, this relation 

 of curves, which I have explained, which is absolutely essen- 

 tial to the pulverization of the soil. The plows of this char- 

 acter turn the whole furrow over without bending it, and such 

 plows ouglit not to be encouraged. Why is it that our farm- 

 ers are satisfied with plows of this character ? It is because 

 we take our notions chiefly from England, and the heau ideal 

 of an English farmer is to throw his furrows over at an angle 

 of forty-five degrees, so that he can stand at one end of the 

 field and look across an unbroken line, and any man who 

 manufactures a plow in such a way as to break this even edge 

 cannot sell one of his implements in England. The English 

 farmer wants to make furrows which will lie up with sharp 

 lines, and then he wants with his harrow to break off those 



