166 RUTA BAGA CULTURE. [PART I. 



fretting and unequal pulling, or jerking, that 

 you have to encounter with horses. And, as to 

 the slow pace of the ox, it is the old story of 

 the tortoise and the hare. If I had known, in 

 England, of the use of oxen, what I have been 

 taught upon Long Island, I might have saved 

 myself some hundreds of pounds a year. I 

 ought to have followed TULL in this as in all 

 other parts of his manner of cultivating land. 

 But, in our country, it is difficult to get a 

 ploughman to look at an ox. In this Island 

 the thing is done so completely and so easily, 

 that it was, to me, quite wonderful to behold. 

 To see one of these Long-Islanders going into 

 the field, or orchard, at sun-rise, with his yoke 

 in his hand, call his oxen by name to come and 

 put their necks under the yoke, drive them be 

 fore him to the plough, just hitch a hook on 

 to the ring of the yoke, and, then, without any 

 thing except a single chain and the yoke, with 

 no reins, no halter, no traces, no bridle, no 

 driver, set to plough, and plough a good acre 

 and a half in the day, To see this would make 

 an English farmer stare; and well it might, 

 when he looked back to the ceremonious and 

 expensive business of keeping and managing a 

 plough-team in England. 



125. These are the means, which I would, 

 and which I shall, use to protect my crops 

 against the effects of a dry season. So that, a$ 



