252 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAKM. 



cotton mill or manufactory we are informed as we 

 pass through presents an accumulation of little 

 additions and improvements, a hive of ingenuity as 

 well as industry, all resulting as it were spontane- 

 ously from the suggestive influence upon the work- 

 man of the machine that at once employs and 

 instructs him. 



But it is not so in agriculture. The educational 

 effect of the Steam-engine upon those it employs, so 

 strikingly visible in manufactures whose date is of 

 yesterday, has not here begun its gracious operation. 

 Here the new power has not yet come in to suggest 

 new processes. The hind plows as his fathers 

 plowed, as the Roman plowed, as Jthe Egyptian 

 plowed ; and even with less advantage ; for in the 

 dry soils and climates of Rome and Egypt, the 

 plow was an apter instrument of cultivation than in 

 our damp soil under a northern sky. 



True, a better machinery has found its way into 

 the more intricate task of thrashing out the grain, 

 and from that it has more recently crept backward, 

 from the last operation of thrashing out the grain, 

 to that of reaping it. For it is curious to notice, in 

 passing, that it has begun at the latter end of the 

 farmer's labor a significant token, perhaps, of its 

 ultimate direction and success, in the earlier details 



