64 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



manner) by one cow tied by the horns to the trunk 

 of a young fir-tree, one of the roots sharpened and 

 acting as a share, and the other serving the plough- 

 man as a handle." The preceding is a representa- 

 tion of what these wretched peasants in some places 

 call a plough. 



The straight stick that serves for a yoke is tied 

 to the horns of cows, and the marks in the soil made 

 by this wooden implement are termed ploughing. It 

 is not a httle mortifying, that grain raised on soils 

 cultivated in this manner, and by these half-civilized 

 boors, should have been brought from Dantzic last 

 year* to give bread to us Americans, with our fer- 

 tile soil and improved implements of farming. 



Such were the ploughs in the infancy of agricul- 

 ture ; and such they still are in all places where im- 

 provement has been shut out, where the mechanical 

 arts are unknown, and where the intellectual condi- 

 tion of the great mass shows they have not as yet 

 advanced beyond the dawn of civilization. The 

 plough of the modern peasant of Italy is but a shade 

 better than that used by the Arab on the plains of 

 Northern Africa ; and the one which serves the 

 boor of Finland and Bothnia is scarcely advanced 

 in mechanical structure beyond that which was used 

 by the " men of Thebes or Memphis." The plough 

 of England and America, in its improved form, is 

 probably the most perfect implement used in the 

 process of agriculture, and there is no one that has 

 done so much to lessen the severity of labour in 

 moving the earth, and rendering it productive of the 

 various vegetables necessary to subsistence. Fig- 

 ures in this case are not necessary, as every farmer 

 knovirs the difference in execution between a good 

 plough and a poor one, and their construction has 

 been reduced to a more complete system than that, 

 perhaps, of any other implement. 



* 1838-9. 



