278 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and may justly do so — of its advantages and its progress, where 

 these plows are annually driven afield and made to do the work 

 belonging to a worthier representation of its kind. Verily the past 

 is so securel}' bound to the present that it is hard to cast off for- 

 ever all the connecting links ! 



Soon after the appearance of the Rotherhani plow, in the year 

 1730, the celebrated e^ethro Tull published a work, in which he 

 advocated the use of four-coultered plows, and gives his reasons 

 therefor. The four coulters divide the l^id into narrow strips, 

 affording free admission to air and water. • The furrow, in conse- 

 quence of being divided into small strips, is more thoroughly pul- 

 verized or loosened in the operation of turning, than it would be 

 remaining in one slice. Here we find an idea which has been 

 wrought upon by science and genius from that day to this, and at 

 last has been accomplished in an easier and more thorough manner 

 than that advocated by Tull. Although Tull was a thorough radi- 

 cal in all progress, the plow he recommended was a cumbersome 

 affair when compared with the Kotherham plow in use at the same 

 time. The beam was ten feet four inches long, made of ash or oak, 

 five inches deep and four inches wide. The forward end was made 

 to rest on a clumsy frame work attached to a pair of wheels, one 

 of which running on the unplowed land was twenty inches in 

 diameter, and the one running in the furrow twenty-seven inches. 

 The attachment of the beam to the wheels was made by two tow- 

 chains, one attached to the axle of the wheels and the other to the 

 top of the frame-work on which the beam was made to rest. Such 

 was the implement with which the celebrated Jethro Tull illus- 

 trated by practice, the radical theories which he labored so hard 

 to impress upon the agriculturists of his times. 



No other noticeable changes were made in the plow for nearly 

 a century. As yet they had been constructed without any fixed 

 rules in regard to the shape of the mould-board. Each manufactu- 

 rer had a form of his own, shaped up according to his eye, conse- 

 quently his art could not be transmitted to others, and when he 

 died his patterns could not be copied. Ilence the art was lost as 

 soon as it was found. Indeed, unless a maker had a very exact 

 eye he could not at all times reproduce his own ideal. " Thus," 

 Arthur Young tells us in his agricultural report of SuOulk, that " a 

 very ingenious blacksmith of the name of Brand, made a plow of 

 iron, of which there is no other in the kingdom equal to it ; and 

 yet when he died no one else could make them." 



