PLOUGHS AND FLOUGHING. 63 



and as an implement for moving the earth. Its ef- 

 fects, however, could not have been much greater 

 than that produced by the single share or foot of the 

 modern cultivator, and would be useless except on 

 soils partially mellowed by digging. Indeed, all the 

 early ploughs were adapted to a warm climate and 

 sandy soil, where no turf ever formed, nor vegetable 

 fibre or roots bound the earth. No implement has 

 yet been discovered among the ancient tools of the 

 tiller of the soil, which would stand for a moment 

 the power exerted by the modern plough, or break 

 up what we term a greensward. In countries 

 where the grasses formed a turf, the sward was cut 

 and turned by the spade and hand, as is clear from 

 ancient representations of agriculture ; and when 

 once the ground had been broken up, it was kept 

 Hnder a course of cropping until completely exhaust- 

 ed, when another piece was subjected to the same 

 process, and the former left to recruit itself by the 

 slow operation of unassisted nature. To the im- 

 proved plough alone do we owe the modern system 

 of rotation in the cultivation of the soil, a system 

 which has increased the productions of the earth 

 and the means of subsistence a hundred fold. 



Perhaps in no part of the world that has any pre- 

 tensions to civilization, are the implements of agri- 

 culture and the processes of farming so rude as in 

 some parts of Poland. A traveller in that country 

 says, " We have seen lands ploughed (after their 



