52 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



critic, a contributor to one of the publications of the New 

 York Agricultural Society, who, in discussing the question 

 of the degree of originality in a plough or mould-board 

 pattern designed by Jethro Wood, a noted New York in- 

 ventor, having pointed out what part of the design was 

 original, says: "It is evident that Mr. Wood had no claim 

 as the inventor of a cast-iron plough, because he had been 

 anticipated in this by Newbold and several others. He 

 could not claim the vertical straight lines, as he had been 

 anticipated in these by Jefferson. He could not claim the 

 transverse line, for Col. Pickering had laid down this line, 

 long before him, on theoretical grounds, and Jefferson, with- 

 out any theory, had adopted it in practice." It is manifest 

 that this writer does not apply the word " transverse," 

 descriptively, in the same way that Col. Pickering did ; what 

 he calls vertical lines are the transverse lines of Col. 

 Pickering. Also, that in the expression, "Jefferson with- 

 out any theory,'' he means, without any theory as respects 

 the particular line. 



The first development of plough-making upon the new 

 principle, in this country, was made chiefly in New York 

 and New Jersey. Besides Newbold and Wood, already 

 mentioned, E. A. Stevens, David Peacock, Zadock Harris 

 and Henry Burden, all of the same region, gained some 

 Celebrity as plough-makers or designers. Of the two ex- 

 planations of proper plough-construction, as an abstract 

 problem, that of Col Pickering, using for a primary illus- 

 tration the surface of an augur twist, rather than that of 

 Mr. Jefferson, in which the illustration or comparison is to 

 the blending of a horizontal with a vertical wedge, seems 

 more likely to be grasped by a practical ,or working me- 

 chanic ; and it is not an unreasonable surmise that some of 

 Col. Pickering's oral or written commentaries may have 

 drifted across the Pennsylvania border and assisted those 

 mechanics in elucidating and embodying the Jeffersonian 

 idea. 



The earliest of these plough makers was Charles New- 



