400 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
refused. Again, an invention may contain two or more claims, while 
but one is really patentable. In the examination, references are cited 
against those only that are old, and a patent refused on that ground; 
whereas, if the inventor would amend by erasing the anticipated claims, 
a patent would be issued. In other cases, in which the applicant is 
entitled to a patent, the specification is so imperfectly prepared that, 
should a patent be issued, it would be worthless from lack of perspicuity. 
Some cases are fairly and properly rejected upon reference. When this 
is the case, the applicant has no cause for complaint. It is the spirit 
of the patent laws to grant full protection to every first and original 
inventor. 
GRAIN-DRILLS AND CORN-PLANTERS. 
From history we are led to believe that the first, and for ages the 
only, mode of sowing seed was by hand, by which the seed was used 
with but little economy, and scattered with but little precision. In the. 
East it was the-custom to prepare the soil by treading it with the feet of 
the ox and the ass. (Isaiah, xxxii, 20; and Matthew, xiii, 3.) History, 
however, fails to tell us who invented the first seeding-machine, or even 
where it was made, yet it does tell us that a rude kind of drill has been 
‘used from avery remote period. The husbandmen of China, Japan, 
Arabia, and the Carnatic, have drilled and dibbled in their seed from 
time immemorial. (Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol, 1, page 675.) 
There was invented in Germany, about the year 1056, a drill-plow, the. 
construction of which is unknown. In England, the first patent for a 
seeding-machine was granted to Alexander Ha amilton, November 27, 
1623, which was the twenty- seventh patent granted under the old law. 
The construction of the machine is not described in the specification, 
nor isa plate furnished ; accordingly we have nothing to guide us in 
arriving at an understanding of what the machine was. All we can 
learn is set forth in the following words, copied from the title of the 
invention : 
A spiall priviledge graunted to Alexander Hamilton, esqre., (for twenty-one years,) 
of the sole practise webjn England, Ireland, and the dmons thereof, of a newe inven- 
con, by him invented and perfected, as well for the ploughinge, as for the harrowinge, 
sowinge, seedinge, and settinge of corn and grain at greater ease and w'* more pfett 
than by anie other means heretofore used. 
About the year 1733, Jethro Tull invented a machine to sow wheat 
and turnip seed in drills, three rows at a time, and to Tull is given the 
eredit of inventing the cylinder with cavities in the surface of the same 
for feeding the seed. About the year 1790 James Cooke invented a 
machine by which manure was deposited with the seed. It is observed 
that while in later English inventions machines were constructed to 
plant several drills at a time, and aiso to adjust the machine so that the 
drills would be a greater or less distance apart, yet until William Groun- 
sell obtained his patent, June 12, 1839, it does not appear that a machine 
was constructed to drop the grain in hills, or at intervals, the distances 
of which could be regulated at will. 
In the cultivation of corn and other cereals in this country, in the 
earlier times, the condition of the newly cleared land precluded the em- 
ployment of machinery in the planting and sowing of seeds; and hence 
corn was planted by hand, and wheat and other small grains were sown 
broad-cast. Machinery could not have been made available to any 
great extent for this purpose, in consequence of the presence of roots 
and stumps of trees of the primitive forests; and it was not until the 
lands of the New England, Southern, and Middie States had become 
cultivated, and immigra tion extended to the prairies of the West, that 
