FARM IMPLEMENTS. 169 



complain at the extravagant prices of his productions ; but what 

 is the peculiar blessing of improvements so greatly extolled, ,if 

 the result of their introduction is chiefly seen in the enhance- 

 ment of the price of the necessaries of life, to such an extreme 

 as to drivB the people from the homes of their childhood to 

 a country where the boasted civilizations of our section have 

 but just commenced to dawn ? 



With all our commerce, and such manufactures as produce, 

 as if by enchantment, the cities of Lowell, Manchester, Law- 

 rence, &c., were it not for the mechanical industry of our shoe- 

 makers, who, with their lapstones and waxed ends, extort, by 

 the employment of all their time and energies, their sustenance 

 from the West, would not our towns become depopulated, and 

 our hill-sides and valleys siiflfer the atrophy of neglect ? 



If some one, who relies more on the vain boastings of the 

 press, and the assumptions of the present generation, than on 

 facts and figures, feels inclined to question the suggestions we 

 •have made, let him give the world the solution of the enigma 

 we have presented, in a manner that will convey the truth to 

 the people, and we then shall have gained something more by 

 this report than we expected when we took up the pen. 



There was, however, one peculiarity which distinguished the 

 implement show of this year, and that was, that most of the 

 articles were manufactured in the county. 



There were seven ploughs — which is, after all, the chief, as it 

 is the most ancient of agricultural implements — which, with 

 their polished coulters, and their graceful curves, suggested the 

 idea of a greyhound that is anxious to leap to the conquest of 

 his prey ; one " improved " cultivator, which indicates that, up 

 to the present year, genius had not entirly exhausted itself on 

 that instrument; one "horse hoe," whose form and shape we 

 have not retained in our memory, strange as it may seem that 

 we should forget the implement which was apparently designed 

 for tlie use of man, had Ijeen given into the possession of that 

 noble animal, the horse, who is destined, perhaps, soon to sur- 

 pass his human rival in the use of an instrument which the lat- 

 ter has monopolized from the days of Nineveh ; one "ox yoke," 

 to which but a single objection could be made, which was, that 

 it seemed made to break or to bow the necks of the faithful 



animals who were destined to wear it. There was a number 

 22* 



