AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 259 



glory of our century, for, although its seeds struck root m 

 the old centres of Hindoo, Egyptian, Greek, Koman, and 

 Arabian civilization, it has grown, like the Century Plant, 

 Avith wearisome slowness, until, almost in our time, it has 

 shot out its flowering stem, and is now at once unfolding a 

 myriad blossoms and hanging full of precious fruits. 



Of these benefits agriculture has had a fair share, and the 

 results are like the transformations of magic. 



It is a little more than a century ago that the wagon, the 

 ploM', and the harrow were almost the only machines used 

 in the field processes of agriculture, and these were of rude 

 and inefficient construction. There were almost no other 

 implements then known for making the labor of four-footed 

 animals of avail in farming operations. Then seeds were 

 sown, crops weeded and tilled, harvests gathered, grain 

 threshed and dressed almost exclusively by hard human toil. 



So fixed had become the habits of the farm through long- 

 centuries of unvaried drudgery, that when Jethro Tull in- 

 vented his seed-drill and horse-hoeing implements he could 

 hardly make way for them, even by showing that they with- 

 stood the crucial test of use. It took many years to bring 

 horse-husbandry to the level of practice, and f)ractice to the 

 level of horse-husbandry. But to-day we prepare the ground, 

 sow the seed, till the plant in all stages of its growth, cut, 

 spread, and gather the harvest, lift it upon the wagon, and 

 lift it again into the barn loft, thresh, winnow, and bag it all 

 by machines impelled by horse poAver. and only requiring a 

 little skilled guidance and some ordinary attendance for full 

 success. 



A quotation from Eliot's "Fifth Essay on Field Husbandry," 

 published in 1754, well illustrates by what stages and influ- 

 ences the machines for utilizing horse power on the farm have 

 been graduallj' simplified, perfected, and cheapened so as to 

 admit of universal use. The quotation, for which I am in- 

 debted to Professor Brewer, is as follows : 



"Mr. Tull's wheat drill is a wonderful invention, but being 

 the first invented of that kind, no wonder if it be intricate, 



