298 History of the English Landed Interest. 



to by Young in his article on Agriculture in the Political Essays. 

 This in its turn gave place to the " Scotch swing plough," 

 invented by Small. The iron plough came into use later 

 on in the century, its share being first tempered by Ransome 

 in 1785, and then chilled by the same engineer nearly twenty 

 years later. The " turn wrist plough " is found soon afterwards 

 in fashion, and other improvements in this species of agri- 

 cultural implement quickly followed suit, all of which were to 

 be partially superseded by the application of steam power. It 

 would seem as though all implements of this description 

 required a driver to walk with the horses as well as the 

 ploughman ; for Mr. Thomas Robins, by accomplishing the 

 feat of ploughing 442 acres single-handed^ obtained a prize 

 of a silver cup from the Bath Agricultural Society in 1784.^ 

 This same year the Committee of Agriculture in the London 

 Society of Arts utilised an invention of Mr. Samuel More, its 

 secretary, in order to test the force necessary to draw the 

 various ploughs then in use. Arbuthnot's plough was found 

 to be better than either Brand's, Duckett's, or the Rotherham 

 variety ; but the second-named inventor received a bounty 

 from the Society, as parts of his construction could be applied 

 with success to those corresponding parts of Arbuthnot's 

 where the mechanism was found to be defective, and a more 

 perfect contrivance made thus than was turned out separately 

 by either of the two makers.^ In a similar manner we might 

 go on to treat of the rapid progress made in various forms of 

 digging, cultivating, harrowing, clod-crushing, rolling, seeding, 

 harvesting, stacking, threshing, winnowing, and grinding 

 machines, most of which, however, remained rude and unwieldy 

 constructions, until well on in the present century. The 

 author of Political Essays mentions, in a footnote to his 

 account of farm implements required, the fact that a thresh- 

 ing-machine had already appeared. This was probably that 

 form of it invented by Michael Menzies, and described in 

 the Gentleman^s Magazine for 1735. Though a failure, it 

 paved the way for ultimate success. Alderton, observing 



' Annals of Agriculture, vol. iii. p. 50, 1784. 

 2 Id. Ibid., vol. i. p. 118. 



