EARLY FARM IMPLEMENTS. 13 



here, find which iu the early days stood out as superior to all 

 agricultural implements of its kind, is constructed, in the 

 first place, with a very long and very solid laud- side. I 

 think it would run alone auj^where, and it has been said of it 

 that it has often been set into the furrow and left to pursue 

 its course alone, the team drawing it over the field. It would 

 stand like a sled-shoe ; and if you were to look at it to-day, 

 it would remind you of the old-fashioned w^ooden sled, such 

 as our fathers used in hauling their wood to their door-yards. 

 T have always insisted upon it that a laud-side is of the first 

 importance in a plough ; that a plough without a land-side is 

 like a sled without a sled-shoe, — it can only be held in place 

 by main strength. A strong man may hold it, but a feeble 

 man can no more handle it than a child ten years old can steer 

 a clipper-ship round Cape Horn. A plough without any sort 

 of balance between the mould-board and the land-side is far 

 from perfect. That plough of which I am speaking, has laid 

 down this one law, — that a good land-side to a plough is a 

 good thing ; and I commend it to the inventors of ploughs in 

 this State and elsewhere as a law which they had better adopt. 



In all the implements of farming, with the exception of this 

 one plough, our ancestors were in that rude and primitive 

 condition. Their business was a simple one. They had fer- 

 tile lands, they had rich pastures, they had rude implements 

 of husbandry ; but they had strong arms, had good markets, 

 economical modes of life ; they got a good living, and they 

 constituted, in the early times, a sturdy, substantial, honorable 

 and honest class in the Commonwealth, who laid the foundation 

 of those virtues which, I am happy to say, have given to Essex 

 County her power in time past in this Commonwealth. 



I have gone over the condition of afiairs in this county, 

 which in the early da}^ stood at the head of farming in this 

 Commonwealth, not only in her practical business, but in the 

 intellectual endeavors made here. We have gone on from 

 that condition, i)ut advancing still. The agriculture of the 

 county has indeed changed, and it may be interesting to some 

 of you to know how. My attention was attracted, two or 

 three years ago, to the repeated attacks which were made 

 upon the prosperity of Massachusetts farming. I was told 

 that the agricultural towns were decaying, that town after 



