278 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



some time aftor the Eevolutiou. The numbers increased, liowever, as 

 the range of pasturage or browsing- grounds was comparatively unlim- 

 ited, so that the keeping of stock may be said to have, assumed some 

 importance in the older settlements, by the middle of the last century, 

 when it had become comparatively safe from molestation. 



One of the chief obstacles the early colonists had to encounter, to 

 add to tlie hardships of their lot in the cultivation of the soil, was the 

 difficulty of procuring suitable implements. A few, no doubt, were 

 brought with them, but all could not obtain them in this way, and the 

 only nietal they had was made of bog-ore, and that was so brittle as to 

 break easily uud put a stop to their day's work. Most of their tools 

 were made of wood, rude enough in construction, heavy of necessity, 

 and little lit for the purpose for which they were made. The process of 

 casting steel was then unknown. It was discovered in Sheffield, England, 

 but not till the middle of the last century, and then kept a secret there lor 

 some years. The few rude farming-tools they had were, for the most 

 part, of home manufacture, or made by the neighboring blacksruith as 

 a part of his multifarious business, there being little idea of the division 

 of labor, and no machinery by which any particular implement could be 

 exactly duplicated. 



But it is recorded that as early as 1G17 some plows were set to work 

 in the Virginia colony, for in that year the governor complained to the 

 company that the colony " did suffer for want of skillful husbandmen 

 and means to set their plows on work; having as good ground as any 

 man can desire, and about forty bulls and oxen, but they wanted men 

 to bring them to labor, and iron for the plows, and harness for the 

 cattle. Some thirty or forty acres we had sown with one plow, but it 

 stood so long on the ground before it was reaped it was most shaken, 

 and the rest spoiled with the cattle and rats in the barn." A contem- 

 porary resident of that colony says, in 1648, " We have now going near 

 upon a hundred and fifty plows," and they were drawn by oxen. In 

 1037 there were but thirty-seven plows in the colony of Massachusetts 

 Bay, and for twelve years after the landing of the Pilgrims the farmers 

 had no plows, but were compelled to tear up the bushes with their 

 hands, or with clumsy hoes and mattocks. It afterwards became the 

 custom, in the Massachusetts colony, for some one owning a plow to 

 go about and do the plowing for the farmers over a considerable ex- 

 teut of territory, and a town sometimes paid a bounty to any one who 

 would keep a plow in repair for the purpose of going about to work in 

 this way. The massive old wooden ])low required a strong team, a 

 stout man to bear on, another to hold, and a third to drive. The 

 work it did was slow and laborious. The other tools were a heavy spade, 

 a clumsy wooden fork, and, later, a harrow. I have had in my possession 

 specimens of these forks two hundred years old. It is difficult to see 

 how they could have done very effective work. 



The plows used by the French settlers upon the "American bottom," 

 in Illinois, from the time of their occupation, in 1082, down to the war 

 of 1812. were made of wood, with a snaall point of iron fastened upon 

 the wood by strips of rawhide. The beams rested upon an axle and 

 small wooden wheels. They were drawn by oxen yoked by the horns, 

 the yokes being straight and fastened to the horns by raw-leather straps, 

 a pole extending back from the yoke to the axle. These plows were 

 large and clumsy, and no small plow was in use among them to plow 

 aniong corn till about the year 1815. They used carts that had not a 

 particle of iron about them. 



Among the forms of the old wooden plow that achieved something 



