THE PLAIN "ENGLISH" OF IT. 211 



be readily preferred to bread ; if, where there hap- 

 pen to ~be none, a steam-driven cultivator can be 

 brought to bear, which, after the simple and beauti- 

 ful example of the mole, shall play out the long 

 comedy of our present field-cultivation in a single 

 act, present a finely granulated seed-bed by a single 

 process, almost at the hour required ; and trammel 

 up the 'long summer fallow' into the labor of a day, 

 with an accuracy as perfect as -the turning of a 

 Lathe, and an aeration (and consequent oxygenation) 

 of the soil as diffusive and minute as that of a scat- 

 tered mole-heap, or the dust flying from a circular- 

 saw-bench. 



"Implement-makers and mechanicians would not 

 be long in understanding all this, if they were not 

 under the supposition, received at second hand by 

 them, and therefore the more difficult to eradicate, 

 that plowing is a necessary form of cultivation to be 

 kept in view. Once let the Q.E.F. be clearly under- 

 stood by them ; once let them be made fully to per- 

 ceive that 'plowing' is merely the first of a long 

 series of means toward the accomplishment of a 

 particular end, that end being the production of a 

 seed-bed, of suitable depth and texture, and with 

 the soil as nearly as possible inverted in its bed 

 and I do not think they will be long in setting the 



