FARM IMPLEMENTS. 305 



The introduction of improved farm implements tends to 

 emancipate men from the necessity of exhausting labor. 



In view of the important interests centring in this depart- 

 ment, your committee would like to have had more funds at 

 their disposal, and to have awarded tens where we have given 

 units. David Dexter. 



HAMPDEN. 



Report of the Committee. 



The committee to wliom was referred the subject of farming 

 tools and grass seeds, submit the following report. Good tools 

 and good farming will be likely to exist together. Farmers can 

 ill afford to work themselves or have their help work with any 

 thing else than good tools. While it may not be true that farm- 

 ing could not have reached its present stage of improvement 

 without the use of modern implements, it is true that for 

 scarcely any advantage are farmers more indebted than to 

 inventive genius applied to the improvement of farming tools. 

 George Crabbe, the Englisli poet, speaks of one 



" Who lived in times, when not a man had seen 

 Corn sown by a drill or threshed by a machine." 



In those times men and women "paired off" on a pillion ; 

 ploughs had wooden mould-boards, and farmers heaped up their 

 compost with a wooden shovel and winnowed their corn with a 

 fan. But not so now. The good genius of improvement that 

 lias made the map of our country look like a vast gridiron with 

 her iron pathways, and hung out her telegraphic wires " from 

 pole to pole " across the land, has visited the farmer in his field 

 and given him new and improved implements for every depart- 

 ment of his trade, so that now we look on the old folks and old 

 ploughs as we look upon the old spinning wheels of the garret. 

 If we had strength enough to wield the clumsy implements of a 

 hundred years ago, the " profit and loss " account would not 

 justify it. Clumsiness itself can work better and faster with 

 good tools than poor ; and enough better and faster to pay for 

 the best tools within reach. 

 . With these views, we rejoice at every new implement offered 



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