304 MASSACHUSETTS AGKICULTUEE. 



HAMPSHIRE. 



Report of the Committee. 



This department of the mechanic arts presents claims of para- 

 mount importance. As a part of the exhibition, it may well 

 excite admiration, improve the taste, gratify the pride and pro- 

 mote the material interests of an industrious people. Improved 

 farm implements measure the progress of civilization. The scale 

 of social elevation of nations, attained in England, France, the 

 United States, and in India or Turkey, is indicated by the farm 

 tools used in those countries. With the rude plough of half- 

 civilized nations, the most skilful would fail to turn the furrow 

 as we have seen it turned to-day, and all the noble oxen from 

 Leverett could not stir the subsoil. In the construction of 

 agricultural implements, inventive genius and enterprise have 

 been tasked. What was once made by any one, who could use 

 a saw or strike an anvil, is now made in large manfacturing 

 establishments, with expensive machinery. The rapid succes- 

 sion of improvements has been truly astonishing. If the old 

 patterns of hoes, shovels, manure and hay forks, fanning-mills, 

 ploughs and wagons, spinning-wheels and looms, used a quar- 

 ter of a century since, could be collected and shown at our 

 annual fair, beside our improved implements, the exhibition 

 would be amusing, as well as useful. Shall it be done at 

 the next exhibition of the Hampshire Society ? Some articles 

 have been improved, and others entirely superseded by new 

 inventions. The hand-cards, hand-looms and spinning-wheels 

 have been safely stowed in the garret, unless perchance the rim 

 of the latter be used to expand garments it once helped to fabri- 

 cate. The sickle and flail give place to the reaper and the 

 threshing machine. Mr. Stetson's mowing machine indicates 

 that even the scythe may be numbered among the things which 

 were. Mr. Stetson has an important improvement. It has not 

 been thoroughly tested, but a trial of it during exhibition showed 

 its decided superiority over a Ketchum's machine, which com- 

 peted with it. It may have been in view of some such machine, 

 that the Irishman asserted that the easiest work he ever did, 

 was to see a Yankee mow. 



