PLOUGILY . 149 



stands that with all the civilities, and courtesies, and smiles, 

 and bows of the occasion, there is not one there who will not 

 utterly supplant him ii* he can. This calls for the long pre- 

 paration, not only of himself, but his driver, the team, aud 

 above all the plough. 



Massachusetts, and especially Essex County, has a lesson to 

 learn from the remarks of Judge Buel, who says that when a 

 state draws its principal subsistence from either manufactures 

 or the sea, owing to bad soil, climate or geographical position, 

 agriculture will not succeed. In Essex County, with the ocean 

 around half our border, and a million manufacturing wheels 

 within our hearing, both offering splendid rewards with little 

 labor, agriculture would stand small chance without a smiling 

 patronage. In Spain, Portugal, and the Papal States, that 

 patronage was withheld, and public opinion degraded it, and 

 it died. In Russia, Prussia, Poland and Hungary the laws 

 villainized it, and there too it died and was buried. The 

 implements of husbandry in those countries are monumental 

 of these facts. " The ploughs in the north of Europe act like a 

 wedge perpendicularly ; those of Tuscany resemble a shovel, 

 eight or nine inches long, and nearly as broad, and act hori- 

 zontally." And it is impossible to say what we might not 

 have been using for ploughs even here, were it not for the 

 exhibitions. The remnants of old ploughs exhibited at the 

 show a year or two since, so shocking to look at, have been 

 made to do the ploughing within the memory of many, and 

 would run still were there none better. But for the public 

 ploughing match, the splendid " Lion, No. 61," of Parker, 

 Gannett and Osgood, would never have been, and the ingenuity 

 and enterprise of that firm would have run in some other 

 direction. It may be true that other ploughs have their valu- 

 able points. We know that competition, as before said, is vio- 

 lent, and many a man would die in the furrow, before he would 

 yield and admit that any other plough could be equal to his 



* A friend at my side during this present writing, lately from California, 

 says he has seen great numbers of Spaniards ploughing, (rooting ?) with 

 a part of a tree, a little piece of iron stuck on in the place of a point, and 

 the Spaniard having apparently no idea of any thing whatever or wherever 

 better. 



