224 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



with its separate arm forming the radius from 

 a central shaft, which bristles all around with a 

 forest of such arms, a sort of revolving BRIAREUS, 

 not rolling let that be especially remembered 

 but steam-driven, a thousand dog-power, if you 

 please, for we must not even mention horses, or we 

 shall drop back into the old Scylla and Charybdis 

 of "traction" and of "rolling," two ideas to be 

 eschewed like poison. 



Let us suppose the picture of this formidable- 

 looking cylinder of claws to be sufficiently described 

 for the moment reminding one, at a distant view, 

 of a half-breed between a hay-tedding machine and 

 a CEOSSKTLL'S clod-crusher but unlike them, funda- 

 mentally distinct from any and every instrument 

 that was ever seen afield, as doing its work not by 

 traction, nor by its rolling weight, but DRIVEN by its 

 axis, as the steam-paddle, the circular-saw, the 

 driving-wheel of the locomotive, are driven, sup- 

 ported by its own apparatus, and abrading the soil 

 with its armed teeth, first cutting its own trench, 

 burying itself to the required depth, and then com- 

 mencing its onward task, tearing down the ~bank 

 (so to speak) on the advancing side, canting back 

 the abraded soil, earth's sawdust, "comminuted, 

 aerated, inverted " into the trench it leaves behind. 



