Ill MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



plough from a celebrated house, but it never run well, and has 

 not been used at all for four years. 



The points upon which improvements in the plough depend, 

 are often minute and nameless. Mathematics fail to bring out 

 the perfection which some distinguished men have expected. 

 "A gentle hollow curve" for a mould-board is too indefinite, 

 certainly. The whole subject is intricate. Of this any one may 

 be easily satisfied by attending a trial in court for an alleged 

 infringement of a patent. The late distinguished Judge Story 

 talked cleverly on the subject of ploughs, that is to say, if the 

 comprehension of jurors might be consulted. " The introduc- 

 tion of a new principle, or a new combination of old ones " is 

 said to be sufficient to defeat a charge of infringement. But in 

 such a tool as the plough, who could so point out the shades of 

 difference as to be intelligible to a jury, even with all the models 

 and bona fide ploughs which blocked up the court-room and 

 the passages leading to it, in a trial a few years ago before 

 the lamented Judge just referred to? Between the improved 

 plough of John Small, and the wedges called such, in and 

 before his day, a difference could be seen, of course ; between 

 Small's and Mr. Jefferson's the difference was less perceptible 

 and more indefinable ; and between Jefferson's and those 

 brought out at the shows twenty-five years ago, a practiced eye 

 would detect the shades of difference easily, no doubt. But 

 who would undertake in words alone to show the variations 

 between two such ploughs as are frequently brought upon the 

 field on the day of the annual show, however different the work 

 might be which they should perform ? 



I have said that mathematics, when applied to this subject, 

 seemed to fail of bringing out a perfect plough. Ferguson's 

 celebrated Scotch plough was made upon mathematical princi- 

 ples as calculated by Mr. Jefferson. But when this plough was 

 put upon trial by Mr. Pusey, President of the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society of Great Britain, and subjected to the most com- 

 plete set of experiments then ever instituted, as reported in the 

 third number of that society's journal, "instead of requiring 

 the least power of draft, it required the most," owing to " its 

 long, wedgelike form, the great surface of its mould-board," 

 and its wanting a wheel, which made its surface-draft so 

 enormous." 



