260 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



as indeed it is, and consists of more Wheels and otber Parts 

 than there is really any Need of. This I was very sensible 

 of all along, but knew not how to mend it. Therefore I 

 applied myself to the Reverend Mr. Cla^p, President of Yale 

 CoUedge, and desired him, for the regard he had for the 

 Publick and to me, that he would apply his mathematical 

 Learning and mechanical Genius in that Affair ; which he did 

 to so good Purpose that this new modelled Drill can be made 

 for the fourth Part of what Mr. Tull's will cost." 



A century ago the hard labor of a man could cut, rake and 

 bind, thresh and clean, at the rate of but seven bushels of 

 wheat per day, and there was no other practicable way known 

 of doing the greater part of this necessary work. Now, a 

 day's work of a man, attending our improved machines, can 

 harvest and prepare for market fifty bushels. 



Half a century ago two men and five horses, working in 

 the most approved manner of those days, could comfortably 

 thresh and clean, and get away the straw of 108 bushels of 

 wheat in one week, or eighteen bushels per day. Last year, 

 in California, human labor, in attendance on a steam thresher 

 and cleaner, could travel from form to farm and dress and 

 bag wheat at the average rate of 110 bushels per man per 

 day, and in full work could finish 165 bushels per man per 

 day. Such saving of precious time at the critical periods of 

 planting and harvest, and such release of human energy from 

 lower to higher uses, is the result of improvements in the 

 mechanics of the farm. 



Chemistry, but a hundred years old, as we might say, has 

 escaped within twenty-five years from the apothecary shop 

 and the dye-house, and gone to work in the fields without 

 disguise. She has always worked there, but anciently did 

 her good deeds for the farmer in a fairy dress, and remained 

 altogether invisible to the common eye. 



About the middle of the last century, a lighthouse, known 

 as the Dunston Pillar, was built on the Lincoln Heath in Lin- 

 colnshire, England. It was erected to guide travelers over a 

 trackless, barren waste, a very desert, almost in the heart of 



