PLOUGHING. 421 



may be alleviated. Waste lands may be converted into fertile 

 fields, and a growth of nauseous or unnutritious weeds sup 

 planted by bending sheaves of golden grain. Rivers may be 

 diverted from their tortuous courses, now rendering vast tracts 

 of land inaccessible, and made to flow in straight lines, leaving 

 their recovered banks open to the plough ; and immense extents 

 of the richest alluvial lands may be rescued from the sea the 

 feeble arm of human art and industry drive back the spoiler, and 

 stay even his proudest waves. All these noble triumphs English 

 agriculture has achieved ; and I shall take pains to lay them 

 before my readers. What I propose to do then further, in this 

 number, is, to detail their various improvements, arid then to 

 speak of the adaptation of particular soils to those purposes for 

 which experience has shown them best fitted. 



LXXVII. PLOUGHING. 



The first and most general operation, to which the soil is sub 

 jected, is ploughing. Man must have been early taught that, in 

 order to render the earth productive, it must be tilled ; and it 

 would be extremely curious, if the materials of such history 

 were attainable, to trace the progress of improvement from the 

 first instrument employed to stir the earth to the present beautiful 

 and ingenious implement, by which acres, and miles of acres, are 

 at pleasure inverted. It would be interesting to know how the 

 North American Indians cultivated their corn (maize) when the 

 country was discovered ; tradition has not preserved the traces 

 of the method which they adopted. Their implements must 

 have been few, and of the most simple description. The smooth 

 stones, some of which I have myself found in places known as 

 their favorite haunts, of a wedge shape, may have been used for 

 digging the ground for the deposit of the seed, and perhaps for 

 keeping the soil loose round the plants : near the sea-shore a 

 clam-shell may have answered the same purpose. Of weeds, 

 probably they had few to contend with, as the land was new and 

 not surcharged with manure, of which perhaps they did not know 

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