130 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



make its exit in the proud consciousness of duty fulfilled, and 

 destiny gracefully submitted to. 



The different machines already invented to supersede the 

 plough, on lands free from roots, stones, and other obstructions, 

 have been so fully described in the agricultural papers, that the 

 general principle which pervades them all, is well understood. 

 But it may not be amiss to say, that one which has recently 

 been subjected to several trials is described by an English 

 writer as " quite the reverse of the plough. The latter is a 

 pressing, the former a lifting operation ; the one consolidates 

 the subsoil, the other fractures it; the one plasters like a ma- 

 son's trowel, the other lightens like a fork. The one is the 

 operation of a wedge, the other of a lever. Hence the result 

 is not only different, but, we may say, opposite on the soil." 

 " "We say not whether this individual implement is calculated 

 for general use or not," adds the writer, "but we do, most un- 

 hesitatingly, that the principle of a digging or forking machine 

 is fully established.^' 



Mr. Mechi, an eminent experimental farmer in England, 

 says in a recent letter to the London Times : — " I have re- 

 ceived from one of our North American colonies the model of 

 a newly invented machine, which, by a happy and most simple 

 combination of horse and steam power, will not only deeply, 

 cheaply and efficiently, cultivate and pulverize the soil, but, at 

 the same time, sow the seed, and leave all in a finished condi- 

 tion. It will also, by a simple inversion, cut and gather the 

 grain, Avithout any rake or otlier complication ; while both in 

 cultivating and harvesting, its operation will be continuous and 

 without stoppage." 



In view of the progress already made, as detailed in the fore- 

 going extract, it can scarcely be doubted that some of us will 

 live to see these predictions measurably realized — if not by any 

 implement yet invented, still by one to be constructed by the 

 genius of an age which refuses to halt short of perfection, and 

 completely ignores the existence of the verb to fail. If the 

 colonies have produced an implement which will not only 

 plough the land, but sow the seed and reap and gather up the 

 crop, have not the Yankees a right to complain that it only re- 

 mains for some one of them to afBx to it an apparatus which 



