INVENTOR OF THE MODERN PLOW. 45 



sent to his Emperor and asked to whom the 

 ring belonged, and Alexander replied that it 

 was intended for the inventor of the plow. 

 Armed with this authority, Wood again de- 

 manded the ring of Mitchill. But there were 

 no steamships or telegraphs in those days, and 

 Mitchill declared that in the long interval in 

 which they had been waiting to hear from 

 Russia, he had given it to the cause of the 

 Greeks, who were then rising to throw off the 

 yoke of their Turkish oppressors. A news- 

 paper of the time calls MitchillV course " an 

 ingenious mode of quartering on the enemy," 

 and the inventor's friends seem to have be- 

 lieved that the ring had been privately sold 

 for his benefit. At all events it never came 

 to light again, and Wood, a peaceful man, a 

 Quaker by profession, did not push the matter 

 further." 



Perhaps another and quite as potent a rea- 

 son why Friend Wood did not follow up this 



