246 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



So it is with Plowing, here and almost everywhere. 

 Our fanners have this year been unable to begin 

 Plowing for "Winter Grain so early as they desired, 

 by reason of the intense heat and drouth, whereby 

 their fields were baked to the consistency of half- 

 burned brick. Much seed will in consequence have 

 been sown too late, while much seeding will have 

 been precluded altogether, by inability to prepare the 

 ground in due season. If a machine had been at 

 hand whereby 15 or 20 acres per day could have been 

 plowed and harrowed, thousands would have invoked 

 its aid to enable them to sow their Grain in tolerable 

 season, even though the cost had been essentially 

 heavier than that of old-fashioned plowing. I tra- 

 versed Illinois on the 13th and 14th of May, 1859, 

 when its entire soil seemed soaked and sodden with 

 incessant rains, which had not yet ceased pouring. 

 Inevitably, there had been little or no plowing yet 

 for the vast Corn-crop of that State ; yet barely two 

 weeks would intervene before the close of the proper 

 season for Corn-planting. Even if these should be 

 wholly favorable, the plowing could not be effected 

 in season, and much ground must be planted too late 

 or not planted at all. In every such case, a machine 

 that would plow six or eight furrows as fast as a man 

 ought to walk, would add immensely to the year's 

 harvest, and be hailed as a general blessing. 



I recollect that a German observer of Western cul- 

 tivation a man of decided perspicacity and wide 

 observation recommended that each farmer who had 



