PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 183 



The plows used by the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and modern French 

 and Spaniards, until the late improvements, and even at present 

 in large parts of Europe, stir the soil without inverting it. In 

 our late improvements we have aimed at two results and accom- 

 plished both ; first, to construct a plow that will go alone, and 

 the plows of Ruggles, Nourse, Mason and Coles need but little 

 attention ; second, to construct a plow that will turn the soil over 

 handsomely, and we have attained that. The husbanding of 

 power is a point to which sufficient attention has not been given 

 until within the last five or six years. I raise the question 

 whether, by turning over the soil handsomely, we gain anything ? 

 It is pleasing to the eye, but does the field produce well ? I be- 

 lieve it to be bad economy. The surface soil, to the depth of 

 eight inches, weighs 1,600 tons. By our inverting plows every 

 particle of that must be raised, and pushed sideways on an aver- 

 age one foot. This requires a great expenditure of power. If 

 the process is repeated, as it usually is, throwing the earth out- 

 ward every time, there is soon a depth of two feet of soil piled 

 up along the fences, and the fields become mis-shapen. The great 

 end of plowing is to pulverize the soil. There are certain chemi- 

 cal changes which take place when the soil is brought up to the 

 surface ; but when you bury that soil it changes back again to 

 what it was before. Another object in inverting the soil is to 

 bury the seeds of weeds. If we bury them they w^ill either ger- 

 minate and appear above the soil about the end of July, at the 

 very time when you wish to stop working in the field, instead of 

 appearing immediately in the spring to be destroyed in the early- 

 cultivation, or they will remain dormant until another year, when 

 by another inversion of the soil they are brought near the sur- 

 face, and are just as troublesome as they would have been if left 

 in their original position. 



Here is a model (exhibiting it) of what I propose. There is a 

 horizontal cutter below, which will cut the soil to a width of 

 about seventeen inches, and lift it one inch, which Mr. Mapes 

 says will separate it into as many parts as if it were raised a foot, 

 and will produce the same effect as if the soil were cut across 

 every quarter of an inch. I propose to have four or more verti- 

 cal cutters besides the central connection with the beam of the 

 plow. I think that this will make a furrow twice as wide with 

 the same power. 



Mr. Carpenter. — Can it be used on sward ground ? 



