DEW AND WATER-ROTTED HEMP. THE PLOW. 401 



SOFTENING DEW AND WATER-ROTTED HEMP. 



INQUIRY BY A MANUFACTURER. 



Patebson. Jan. 6, 1847. 



Dear Sir : I wanted to see your new books and talk farmin;? ; but more es- 

 pecially to ask you to make inquiry of some of your Kentucky friends as to the 

 process they have in practice there for softening Dew and Water-rotted Hemp, 

 to render it as soft as Flax. They do this here, and in Scotland, but it is by a 

 very imperfect machine and cumbrous withal. In Kentucky, I am told, they do 

 it at little expense and less trouble. If it can be done well, it would bring this 

 hemp into very extensive use. I have done it very successfully without the aid 

 of a machine ; but a gentleman from Kentucky, visiting me, assured me it was 

 done better, with less trouble and expense, in that State. 



If you should get any information regarding it, I hope il will be of such a 

 character as to avail of the process without farther inquiry. If it be a machine, 

 let us have a drawing ; if a chemical agent, let us know what it is that is to be 

 applied to produce the desired effect. 



Very many happy New-Years to you from yours, truly, JOHN TRAVER3. 



J. S. Skinner, Esq. 



"We hope the aoove will fall under the eye of Mr. Anderson, of Louisville, or some other gen- 

 tleman of experience and public .spirit, who will give us the information desired. By-the-by, we 

 bad hoped to hear again from A. before now ; but were we asked, On what claim? we should 

 be nonplussed, as they say in the Slashes. 



THE PLOW, 



A3 ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT— OBJECTIONS 



TO MONEY PREMIUMS. 



HAvmc on various occasions alluded to the labor-saving inventions and 

 changes in the structure of agricultural implements, and the admitted progress 

 which is making in the knowledge of the composition and use of manures, the 



vast improvement in fruits and vegetables, as well as the additions to both 



and to the better understanding of the principles of breeding, rearing and fatten- 

 ing our domestic animals, within the last half century — as arguments which 

 should at once put to shame and disarm the opponents of" book knowledge" and 

 of public expenditure for agricultural education, it may not be without its use- 

 fulness to go back to some facts in the history of that king of implements, the 

 Ploio — not back to the time, long since the discovery of America, when the haul- 

 ing of the plow "by the tayle " was forbidden by act of Parliament, but to the 

 comparatively very recent period in our own country, and even in our personal 

 recollection, when the wooden mould-board and the lor ought-iron share, o-ave 

 way to cast-iron, against all necessity or promise of usefulness, in the opinion of 

 those wise disciples of the stand-still school, who, time out of mind, have con- 

 tended that we are already standing on the topmost round of the ladder of all 

 useful discovery. It may be some gratification to those who entertain at least 

 an innocent curiosity to be instructed in the history of Agriculture to see how 

 modestly and cautiously the first use of the cast-iron share was announced ; and 

 yet how short was it of the superb cast-iron plows now produced at all our great 

 manufactories of agricultural implements ! 



In the " Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts 

 and Manufactures," so highly honorable in its origin and proceedings to the Liv- 

 ingstons, the L'HoMMEDiEus, the Mitchells and De Witts in those palmy days 

 (633} ae 



