200 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of art 

 showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working in 

 tangible material substance. The makers of this plough 

 not the designer the various makers, who gradually 

 put it together, had many things to consider. The 

 fields where it had to work were, for the most part, 

 on a slope, often thickly strewn with stones which jar 

 and fracture iron. 



The soil was thin, scarce enough on the upper part 

 to turn a furrow, deepening to nine inches or so at the 

 bottom. So quickly does the rain sink in, and so quickly 

 does it dry, that the teams work in almost every weather, 

 while those in the vale are enforced to idleness. Drain 

 furrows were not needed, nor was it desirable that the 

 ground should be thrown up in " lands/' rising in the 

 centre. Oxen were the draught animals, patient enough, 

 but certainly not nimble. The share had to be set for 

 various depths of soil. 



All these are met by the wheel plough, and in addi- 

 tion it fulfils the indefinite and indefinable condition 

 of handiness. A machine may be apparently perfect, a 

 boat may seem on paper, and examined on principles, 

 the precise build, and yet when the one is set to work and 

 the other floated they may fail. But the wheel plough, 

 having grown up, as it were, out of the soil, fulfils the 

 condition of handiness. 



This handiness, in fact, embraces a number of minor 

 conditions which can scarcely be reduced to writing, but 

 which constantly occur in practice, and by which the 

 component parts of the plough were doubtless uncon- 

 sciously suggested to the makers. Each has its proper 

 name. The framework, on wheels in front the distinc- 

 tive characteristic of the plough is called collectively 

 " tacks," and the shafts of the plough rest on it loosely, 



