FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 61 



line with which Mr. Pickering began. The coincidence 

 was inevitable, since the reasoning in each case had 

 reference to mathematical or geometrical laws. 



This view of the matter is confirmed by a competent 

 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 inventor, 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 trans- 

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

 long before him, on theoretical grounds, and Jefferson, 

 without 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 without 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 Pea- 

 cock, Zadock Harris and Henry Burden, all of the 

 same region, gained some celebrity as plough-makers 

 or designers. Of the two explanations of proper 

 plough-construction, as an abstract problem, that of 

 Col. Pickering, using for a primary illustration the 

 surface of an augur twist, rather than that of Mr. 

 Jefferson, in which the illustration or comparison is to 



