168 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ply rewarded, even if new models and machines were rare, and 

 the spectator was called to view only those with the uses and 

 importance of which he was already familiar. 



The character of our people for inventive genius and skill is 

 too well established in the records of the country to allow the 

 suspicion that the mechanics of New York and Pennsylvania 

 surpass them in ingenuity and skill, because they do in the 

 number of their inventions in the department of agricultural 

 implements recorded at the Patent Office at Washington. Hu- 

 man ingenuity is at the comniand of want and necessity, which 

 are always allied with the overpowering stimulus of profit ; and 

 it is the character of the soil that is to be cultivated in the Mid- 

 dle and Western States, that inspires the genius of the mechan- 

 ics in those States. Our variety of implements, although mear 

 gre compared with some other sections, is probably fully equal 

 to the demand of the times, and has kept pace with the spirit 

 of intelligence and general improvement which prevails so uni- 

 versally at the present time. The difference in ploughs, rakes, 

 shovels, hoes, axes, forks, carts, and all other ancient imple- 

 ments, as they appear at the present day in contrast with the 

 past, attest sufficiently the attention and skill bestowed on this 

 brancli of science ; and the only enigma left to excite the won- 

 der of the economist is, that they seem to have had no other 

 effect than to enhance the price of the crops they help to bring 

 forth and were intended to multiply. 



There seems to be a principle at work which requires that, in 

 proportion as the fruits of the earth are aided in their produc- 

 tion by beautiful and superior implements, the more costly they 

 shall become. W^hen the wooden ploughshare, with scarcely 

 metal enough to grow bright by the friction of the earth, as the 

 slow-moving oxen dragged it along — stimulated more by the 

 whip of the driver tlian the vigor of their bodies — was the only 

 instrument to break the glebe, the potato, that staple commod- 

 ity of the million, was supplied for one-eighth of a dollar per 

 bushel, while the superb instrument, which has now become an 

 object of attraction, and almost veneration, in the crystal pal- 

 aces of the world, with the Koohinoor and Minnie rifle, cannot 

 do the same work without the exaction of a whole dollar, or 

 eight times as much. 



It would not seem to be the policy of the agriculturist to 



