268 HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 



ancestors used two thousand years ago. I cannot better de- 

 scribe it than by comparing it with a rake. Imagine for your- 

 self an enormous iron rake, with a long handle and four teeth, 

 long enough to scratch the ground some twenty inches deep, 

 and strong enough to endure the draft of a team. With a 

 leather thong the farmer fastens the end of this to the yoke of 

 a pair of cows or of oxen, as the case may be, and drags it 

 through the field in all directions till those huge teeth, twenty 

 inches long, readily sink into the ground their whole length, 

 and pass freely through it. Now what is the result of this ? 

 Why, that he gets fifty bushels of wheat to the acre, once in 

 two or three years, and gets a large crop of roots or some infe- 

 rior grain, the intervening years, and that with a husbandry 

 vastly inferior to our own in everything except the more care- 

 ful preparation of the ground before sowing. This refers to 

 the north of Spain, among the Calabrian mountains, where 

 the climate is scarcely superior to our own ; and where just 

 about the same process of cropping has been going on for at 

 least fifty generations. 



We spoke of learning from an inferior. We are not going 

 to advise you to work cows, as the Spaniard does ; nor to send 

 your wives out to drive them, as many Europeans do ; nor to 

 substitute the Spanish plough for your own beautiful instrument. 

 The farmer should imitate no one slavishly, but be ready to 

 learn from all, even from the conservatives of the oldest plough 

 in the world. We believe there is many an old field in this 

 region, of rather heavy loam, ploughed for a half a century six 

 inches deep and no more ; clay colored, cold and impervious 

 as you descend below the six-inch level ; in which if the 

 owner were shut up to the alternative, either of reinverting 

 the old six inches, or of patiently scratching down three times 

 that depth with the Spanish plough, he might better choose 

 the latter; because by so doing, although he should expend 

 more labor in spring, he would get a better return in autumn, 

 and leave his land in a better condition for future crops. But 

 is it not possible that some instrnment adapted to produce a 

 like effect on the soil to that of the Spanish plough, but far 

 easier, neater, and more workmanlike in its operation, will yet 



