PLOUGHING MATCH AT SAFFRON WALDEN. 425 



amounting, in money and clothing, to 8 10s., or about $43, the 

 lowest to 2 10s., or more than $12, and the unsuccessful com 

 petitors, to the number of seven, were to receive 1 each. 

 This was putting them through a fine sieve, so as to come at 

 the best quality. A premium of five guineas was likewise 

 offered to the farmer who had employed the greatest number 

 of ploughboys on his occupation, in proportion to acreage, for 

 the preceding year, provided one of the boys in his employ 

 should have obtained a prize for ploughing at the Annual Meet 

 ing. Such a premium as this seemed well suited to induce the 

 farmers to give particular attention to the improvement of the 

 lads in their service. Two circumstances contribute strongly to 

 the perfecting of this most essential art. The first is, that boys 

 are trained to it as early as they can possibly be employed with 

 safety. The second is, the division of labor which generally 

 prevails, so that individuals devote themselves, to a degree 

 exclusively, to one particular object ; a ploughman is constantly 

 employed at the plough, and a herdsman in the pastures, or stalls. 



There are two points, which have seemed to me always par 

 ticularly to test the skill of a ploughman. The one is the mode 

 in which he lays out his land, and strikes the first furrow ; and 

 the second, that in which he finishes the last furrow. In the 

 case to which I have referred, the last land remained, at the close, 

 a single unbroken strip of equal width, from one end of the field 

 to the other, lying like a stretched-out ribbon, which, as the 

 ploughman came down the course, he turned without breaking, 

 and with perfect precision, from one end to the other. In this 

 instance, the horses seemed almost as well trained as the driver, 

 and inspired with an equal emulation. The finishing of the 

 ends of the lands is always a work of great care ; they are cross- 

 ploughed, and the whole affair is completed with an equal neat 

 ness throughout. 



I have seen very good ploughing in the United States, and 

 perhaps in no department of agriculture has greater improvement 

 taken place than in ploughing, and in the construction of 

 ploughs. Formerly, nothing could be more slovenly executed. 

 A straight line was not to be seen. The land was not half 

 turned over. The furrows were of such depth or thickness as 

 they might chance to be ; and the plough itself, when in action, 

 resembled very much a live animal, with a sort of grasshopper 

 36* 



