126 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



A word here for the ladies, in the mention of Tj'ler's Patent 

 Washing Machine, for washing and wringing clothes. We are not 

 prepared to say this is not better than any of the thousand and one 

 that have preceded it, and for the most part " gone to the shades." 

 Z. S Patten, Bangor, would be happy to furnish any lady with a 

 machine, and for aught we know, " a hand to turn". But we must 

 hasten to the more weighty matter of 



Plows. This Committee is believed to have been originally made 

 up of a majority of plow-makers — a condition of things that was 

 viewed by at least one of the Committee with forebodings of discord. 

 But perhaps fortunately for the unanimity — the oneness of spirit in 

 which this is conceived and presented, these gentlemen mechanics 

 take no part in this pleasant, closing duty. We "practical farmers," 

 who break, demolish, criticise, condemn without stint all these things 

 that come in our way, have a clear field of it, and mean to use the 

 largest liberty. The difficulties that a Committee encounter in this 

 part of their duty, under the existing state of things in this young 

 society, are many and great. After doing our best, we can have no 

 surety, no settled conviction, that we have done justice to the par- 

 ties — to the manufacturer or the farmer. 



Plows were entered by eight manufacturers, all within the State. 

 The Committee desirous of seeing their practical workings, repaired 

 to the field at the hour announced for the plowing match, being an 

 early hour of the day, and with long patience waited the moving of 

 so large a body as a State Agricultural Society in field assembled. 

 The day wore on, and near its close we had the satisfaction of seeing 

 several plows turn successive furrows. The soil of 'the field varied 

 from a clay loam to a heavy clay. 



No instrument was provided to test the resistance made by the 

 plows in doing a given furrow. 



Here we cannot do better than quote from the report by an able 

 Committee appointed by the State Agricultural Society of New 

 York, who assembled at Albany, June, 1850, for the purpose of a 

 trial of plows : 



"We would earnestly invite the attention of manufacturers of 

 plows to the necessity of adapting their implements to special inir- 

 poses. It is a great mistake to suppose that the construction of a 

 plow 'of all work,' as it is called, is possible. The different circum- 



