INVENTOR OF THE MODERN PLOW. 63 



the world. If by some miraculous calamity 

 this one implement were forever swept away, 

 universal and unappeasable famine would be 

 inevitable. And that occasional famines of a 

 local character are disappearing from the civ- 

 ilized world, is very largely, if not chiefly, due 

 to the improved tillage resulting from im- 

 proved plows. 



We might well say, in paraphrase of a fa- 

 miliar saying attributed to Napoleon : Let 

 me make the plows of a nation, and I care 

 not who makes their laws. 



The primitive plow was and is (for the bar- 

 barian of to-day is substantially the same in 

 his agricultural methods as the barbarian of 

 antiquity) simply a forked stick, to which is 

 attached by a strip of rawhide or a wisp of 

 grass, a beast, often the patient cow. As the 

 prong passes over the ground, held down by 

 the bowed form of the poor tiller, it barely 

 scratches the face of the earth. 



