FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 55 



very little friction and with much less draught than 

 other ploughs of the same size, owing, probably, to the 

 spiral wind in the plane of the mould-board." The phrase 

 " spiral wind,'' though not used by Mr. Jefferson or Col. 

 Pickering, would not have been rejected by either. 



It cannot be doubted that Mr. Quincy's unstinted praise 

 of the new plough took effect, and that the agricultural 

 readers of the Journal, and many of their farmer neigh- 

 bors, soon equipped themselves with that sort of an imple- 

 ment, by using two of which, the same number of men and 

 oxen could plough two acres instead of one, or one acre in 

 half the time. 



That the stage now reached in the improvement of the 

 plough marked an extraordinary advance in the agricultu- 

 ral art is indicated by the concurrent approval, in foreign 

 lands, of the new method of construction, by the two great 

 institutions named, and the adoption of the method there, 

 and by the sudden expansion, in this country, of the plough 

 manufacture. The fact that ploughs of Jefferson's model 

 are not now used does not affect the proposition that a 

 great stride had been made. What was then solely sought 

 for, both in America and Europe, the plough that with the 

 minimum of power would best invert the sod, had been 

 obtained. A plough that with less economy of power 

 should serve also to break or disintegrate the sod had not 

 then been asked for. Herein, in part at least, lies the ex- 

 planation of the circumstance that after the year 1818, 

 during a period of twenty-two years, the Massachusetts 

 society offered no premium " for the best plough." 



The cattle show of the Massachusetts society at Brigh- 

 ton, in 1816, though the first held in this section of the 

 State, had been anticipated in date by the Berkshire 

 County Agricultural Society, whose first exhibition took 

 place in 1811, at Pittsfield, and was thereafter an annual 

 event. This priority appears to have been a matter of con- 

 siderable pride on the part of members of that society, who 



