FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 53 



bold of New Jersey, who, as remarked above, was the first 

 to make a mould-board wholly of cast-iron. Prosperity did 

 not attend him, because of a local superstition ; for it is 

 said, in reference to his plough, that " the farmers had in 

 some way imbibed the strange notion that the cast-iron 

 plough poisoned the land, injured its fertility, and promoted 

 the growth of weeds." But towards the year 1817 Jethro 

 Wood triumphed over this prejudice, and ploughs of his- 

 design had a very extensive sale. All these plough makers 

 made certain variations from, <5r additions to, what the strict 

 terms of Mr. Jefferson's description call for. Indeed Mr. 

 Jefferson himself stated, subsequently to his first announce- 

 ment, that he had so done in ploughs made for his own use. 

 His object was to better the plough for his own farm work ; 

 theirs to achieve some improvement upon which to base a 

 claim for a patent. But the main principle was held to, 

 as appears in what was said above as to the degree of origi- 

 nality in Wood's plough. Of ploughs of the Wood's 

 pattern nearly 7000 were sold in 1817 and the two follow- 

 ing years, and of these more than 1,000 went, in the year 

 1818, to Virginia. In the period immediately following 

 there is no reason to suppose that Virginia's annual pur- 

 chase was less ; and, if not the actual numbers, the general 

 fact could hardly fail to become known to Mr. Jefferson,, 

 and must have been a very gratifying circumstance of his 

 declining years. 



These New York ploughs, of one make or another, soon, 

 reached Massachusetts, and, judging by a description given 

 in 1820, by a newspaper correspondent, who resided appar- 

 ently in the south-eastern part of the state, it was high 

 time. He says that in most parts of Massachusetts the Old 

 Colony plough and the Sutton plough were still in use. 

 The former he describes as having a ten-foot beam and a 

 four-foot land side, and of the latter he says : "They are 

 not fit to plough any land that has sod on it ; your farmers' 

 furrows stand up like the ribs of a lean horse in the month 

 of March." And he adds, " The great objection to all these 



