REPORT ON IMPLEMENTS. 549 



man even, or one horse, is worth to them every year what it would cost to pay 

 and feed a man ; and yet much more where it saves the labor of a horse, for it will 

 cost as much to keep one horse as to keep two men. True, you pay no wages to 

 the horse, except the interest on the sum he would sell for, or what he cost ; but 

 then he is liable to be killed any day or night by a small worm, and your capital 

 is lost forever. The machine eats nothing ; and yet for showing an overgrown 

 stallion or bullock — which anyone may raise and fatten — the exhibitor gets the 

 highest prize at the command of the Society: but for the exhibition of an im- 

 proved machine, which is the product of much and anxious intellectual exercise, 

 and which displays the finest combinations of mechanical principles, and which 

 it is expensive to exhibit, as it must be transported and can 't walk to the Shows, 

 our wise Institutes and Societies reserve a quire of blank printed •' Certificates 

 of Merit" which they fill up to order, and which, costing a picayune each, are 

 often filled up for things that get lauded to the skies at the time, and are never 

 more heard of. 



The trial of machines should be conducted by accomplished engineers and men 

 of science ; such, for instance, in Delaware, as Major Trimble and Doctor 

 Thompson, united with practical and disinterested farmers, — as Jones and Rey- 

 bold, and Clark — men of known abilities and experience, who could not be 

 made noses of wax, and who would only decide on the most careful and 

 thorough trial ; and it would be much better even to pay such men well for their 

 time, than to hoard up the money of these Institutes and Societies, for the sake 

 of saying they have " so ?nuch stock in the funds /" 



The New- York State Society has laid by eight thousand dollars, and the 

 American Institute perhaps as much. The former has very Avisely and in a 

 proper spirit offered premiums, we believe, to the amount of more than six 

 thousand, while the latter buys stocks, and lays by for a chance at a Farm, and 

 a wing of a College, if the State will only buy the body, and put the whole fowl 

 in their keeping ; or in other, if not such plain words, "under the auspices " of 

 the American Institute — instead of ofi'ering all, except enough to meet the ex- 

 penses of their next meeting, for essays on subjects which agriculturists need to 

 be enlightened upon, and for objects that it would not fail for the benefit of Agri- 

 culture, to bring into activity the genius of all the great machinists of the coun- 

 try and the world ! — for in such cases, we should not confine ourselves to any 

 country, but take the best and most perfect and economical contrivance, if in- 

 vented by the Old Boy himself, and be glad to get that much out of him for the 

 good of mankind. Why not, out of their thousands that are hoarded up, offer $500 

 for some neio and valuable application of Steam to Agriculture ? Why not have 

 traveling steam machines, going through the country cutting ditches and drain- 

 ing marshes, and digging ice-houses and cellars, and making roads, boring for 

 water, and for marl, coal, and other minerals ? 



Go into your towns, and see there what it is doing for the printer, and the 

 cabinet-maker, and the carpenter, and the ship-builder — all the branches of man- 

 ufactures and mechanics ! Go into your Government Arsenals and Navy Yards, 

 and see what steam is doing in the way of forging and finishing chain cables, 

 and cannon and small arms, even to making screws for gun-locks, and how much 

 labor and money it has been made to save in the preparation and repair of all 

 the engines of human destruction ! because these economical uses of it have been 

 elicited and paid for, by the Public Treasure of the country, and that, too, collect- 

 ed chiefly from the cultivators of the soil ! But what is Steam doing for Acri' 



(1029) 



