CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



human and brute labor might at once be released from the 

 most toilsome drudgery of the farm, to be devoted to other 

 valuable objects ! It would create an entire revolution in our 

 agriculture in its more perfect and timely cultivation of the 

 Boil ; it would double our crops and increase the comfort and 

 happiness of our laboring population in a wonderful degree. 

 The newly applied power of the caloric engine, by its cheap- 

 ness and simplicity, could be brought within the management 

 of almost the common laborer; and the division of labor 

 consequent on so vast an acquisition, would reduce our 

 "cropping" to a system as perfect and certain as that of 

 the reaper or the thrasher. Every crop could be sown in 

 season on soil thoroughly prepared ; the only drawback to the 

 highest cultivation, so far as casting the seed into the earth 

 is concerned, would bo removed; and the harassing solicitude 

 of the husbandman on that branch of his labors, could be 

 transferred to the important subject of keeping his lands in 

 their requisite state of fertility. 



We may partake of the enthusiasm of our author in the 

 contemplation of a subject so pregnant with blessings, but 

 when accomplished, as wo are confidant it will be and at 

 no distant time either the benefits arising from the discov- 

 ery of steam itself, in its application to other branches of 

 industry, will be scarcely less than may result from its taking 

 precedence of the plow in the cultivation of the soil. Four- 

 fifths of the population of the United States cultivate tho 

 earth for a subsistence, and the motive cultivator, in taking 

 precedence of the plow, will effect a reduction of at least 

 twenty per cent., or one fifth in tho labor thus applied. The 

 cotton, tobacco, tho rice and the sugar lands, all alike will, or 



