348 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



There is the stupidest waste of labor from the want, in part, 

 of suitable tools to work with, and often from want of knack, both 

 throughout Hungary, so far as I saw it, and in Austria. It was 

 really often amusing to see what labor it required to accomplish 

 the simplest tasks. Two men and a boy with hoes, would do 

 less than a single man would have done with a good shovel. 



Generally speaking, the implements of agriculture are very 

 inferior in this part of Europe, and there can be no economy of 

 labor with bad implements. I did not see on the continent 

 an axe to be compared with even the worst that comes from 

 the machines of the Douglas Axe Company. One difficulty 

 they have to contend with is the want of proper woods to make 

 into handles. They have none of the hard, solid, and flexible 

 woods like our hickory. Who could make a first-rate axe 

 handle of black walnut ? I do not think we fully appreciate the 

 immense advantage the variety and high quality of our forest 

 trees give us in the construction of all machinery which requires 

 the use of wood. They enable us to attain strength and dura- 

 bility with lightness and symmetry, to an extraordinary degree ; 

 and the want of these same sjDecies of timber explains, in part, 

 pi'obably, the little progress that appears to have been made in 

 agricultural mechanics in some of the continental countries. 

 Still, the large land proprietors are introducing many new and 

 improved agricultural implements from abroad, on account of 

 the difficulty of procuring labor, since the abolition of the robot, 

 or peasant tenantry, whereby the work required on large estates 

 was performed by the peasants as part of tlie tax which the old 

 laws imposed upon them. 



Pesth is the centre of some of the largest cultivated estates 

 in the Austrian empire. The land, indeed, is mostly held by 

 very large proprietors, and such has been the national and family 

 pi-ide of these large owners in keejjing the estates in their 

 own hands, tiiat they have not been devclo{)ed as such estates 

 have been in England by tenants, but tilled by serfs till within 

 a very few years, the peasant tenure system not having been 

 abolished till the Revolution of 1849. Previous to that time the 

 laud owner was not ol)ligcd to pay for the lal)or upon his estates, 

 the size of which varied from five thousand to a hundred thcfli- 

 sand acres, Down to 17(U, the peasant was in a position not 

 much better than a slave. If he occupied land under a large 



