THE " 8TEAM-CULTIVATOE." 225 



If I have failed in making the picture clear or 

 intelligible, it is yet not that about which I care so 

 much, as to " draw aside the curtain." The idea of 

 plowing and digging stands like a thick blind before 

 the whole philosophy of the subject, and screens the 

 inventive mechanician from the simple application of 

 his mind to the Q. E. F. ^ Thing, to T)e done"~\ His 

 faculties are clogged, stupefied, held in check by the 

 pestering contemplation of processes that enter not 

 necessarily into the problem to be solved, or need ap- 

 pear in its solution. They are unessential to the mat- 

 ter. They became so the very instant the steam-en- 

 gine was discovered / a power, and the only one we 

 possess, that can be carried to the field, and put into 

 an agricultural machine like the main-spring into a 

 watch to give it independent intrinsic action with- 

 in itself, owing nothing to, but separate entirely from 

 the traction and progression of the implement along 

 the field. Hitherto there is not even the attempt to 

 apply it ; it has never had a chance. Every field- 

 implement we have works 5y traction like the 

 Pedometer that ticks because the wearer marches : 

 but with steam for our main-spring we can make the 

 watch tick, independent of the wearer. When we 

 understand that, when we have in idea and in fact 



detached the work of cultivation from the mere 

 10* 



