THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



405 



THE PRESENT AND THE PAST OF THE IMPLEMENTS OF 



AGRICULTURE. 



At a period in our social history somewhat more 

 than a thousand years ago, such was the poverty of the 

 husbandmen and the wretched condition of husbandry, 

 that it was tlie custom for six or eight individuals to 

 club together their scanty means to procure a plough, 

 and oxen wherewith to drive it— hedging themselves 

 round in their social organization with many quaint 

 laws, which in the minuteness of their details showed 

 how important to them was their association together, 

 how miserably scanty their means, wlien they had to 

 contribute their mite to the purchase of an instrument 

 — and this so rude, that by enactnient about the same 

 period we have alluded to, no man was allowed to 

 guide a plough unless he could fir^t construct it, and 

 make, moreover, the twisted willow withes with which 

 his wretched oxen drew it. 



In the year of grace 1857, a town of England, rich 

 in historical asscfciations, possessed of monuments older 

 far than the period we have above referred to, welcomed 

 with arch triumphal, and banners flaunting, the annual 

 gathering of an agricultural society, numbering its 

 members by thousands, contributing of their means, 

 not like their brethren of old, to secure assistance in 

 their individual operations merely, but to collect infor- 

 mation and detail experience, and to scatter them 

 broadcast over the land, that all might participate in 

 the benefit of their association. At this great gathering 

 of agriculturists, it will be the duty of the historian in 

 after-times to relate, such was the condition to which 

 the science of agriculture had attained, and such the 

 extent of the mechanism which aided her operations, 

 that of parties exclusively devoted to the making of 

 these aids, no fewer than 154 exhibited nearly 1,000 

 implements, so wide in their range of operations that a 

 classification of them would take up nearly 100 divisions. 

 These two periods we may take to represent the past 

 and the present condition of agricultural mechanism. 

 Nor let us, in the strength and vigour of our riper 

 yeai's, think slightingly of the humble efforts of those 

 who have preceded us in the march of civilization. 

 Who can tell how much of our life-energy we owe to 

 the agricultural societies of far-oiF times ? Or how much 

 of that greatness and social security we enjoy, to those 

 who held their meetings in troublous days, with the 

 sound, mayhap, of the war-shout in their ears, or the 

 crackling of blazing roof-tree and blackened house- 

 walls? And if there is truth in the doctrine of him 

 who was not wont to write genially or kindly, that 

 " He who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of 

 grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one 

 grew before, will deserve better of mankind than the 

 whole race of politicians put together" — let us not 

 arrogate to ourselves the boast of having done all the 

 good in this way. But with the recollection of our re- 



cent triumphs, let us, with all humility, remember the 

 claims of the pioneers of the science. Nor will it read 

 us a useless lesson if we recall to mind the truth, as 

 we read — and reading, mix pity with our wonder — of 

 the state of our science years ago, that the time may 

 come when some future agilculturist may peruse with 

 no less wonder accounts of what we are doing now. 

 When he will think how little room there was for us to 

 boast of our nineteenth-century doings. For the signs are 

 now rising thick around us, to warn us that we are about 

 to enter on anew field of discovery and mechanical ap- 

 plication. And that however nobly our mechanicians 

 have met tiie requirements of our improved field- 

 practice, the time is fast approaching — if indeed it has 

 not already arrived— when more will be required of 

 them. When new opportunities will be accorded 

 them, of gaining fi-esh laurels and making new 

 triumphs. We live, at all events, in a transition- 

 time. Already, in imagination, the sound of the steam 

 whistle drowns that of the ploughbo]/ ; the snort and 

 puflT of the engine mix mayhap, to ears sentimental, 

 harshly with the sounds of rural life, and the black 

 smoke cloud darkens the grain fields or the shocks of 

 smiling corn. In many of our departments we have al- 

 ready got to the ultimatum — to that point beyond which, 

 with our present implements, we can go but little further. 

 Again, a careful, a philosophical survey of the whole 

 range of our mechanism must force the — to many un- 

 welcome, but not less unimportant — suggestion, that 

 much of it is a mere necessity of a bad system of 

 working. We invent an implement at the expenditure 

 of much thought ; and the farmer at much cost of 

 money uses it, to get rid of an evil which, by going 

 more philosophically to work, we could prevent alto- 

 gether. We expend much time and money in getting 

 rid of effects, and effects merely, without bestowing a 

 thought on the cause. We would think little of the 

 wisdom of the manufacturer who would prefer to buy, 

 and keep working, at a costly rate, a machine to do 

 away with certain prejudicial peculiarities in his mate- 

 rials, the presence of which could have been prevented 

 by a little expenditure of trouble at some certain stage 

 of his proceedings. Yet this is what many of us do in 

 our field operations. We bring into use a complicated 

 array of mechanical movements or tedious processes, 

 to undo evils, which if we do not altogether cause, we 

 do little to prevent, while prevention may be, or is in 

 our power. And although able men and acute think- 

 ing minds have been for some time, and are now 

 pointing the way to a more economical, because more 

 philosophical way of working, such is the force of 

 prejudice, and such the trammels of custom, we 

 are content to go on in the same path which 

 our fathers have trod before us, and use our 



