526 MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Society, in instituting the ploughing matches at Brighton, was 

 principally an improvement in the breed of working oxen. 

 Yet so slow were the competitors in those honorable and use- 

 ful contests, to allow of any deficiency in their animals, and to 

 lay upon them the stigma of defeat, that they were led to 

 most searching examination into the structure of their ploughs, 

 to which they were not willing to charge it. The result, 

 therefore, has been successive improvements in the plough. 

 A general impetus has been thence communicated to the 

 whole art of agriculture. Improvements and inventions have 

 abounded. New implements have been invented, old ones im- 

 proved, and thus a better tillage has been produced, and greater 

 facilities in harvesting have enabled the farmer the better to 

 save his crops. 



Another indispensable implement upon the farm and one of 

 great practical utility, is the harrow. This instrument natu- 

 rally follows the plough in farm operations, and although 

 scarcely less important, in the service which it renders, than 

 the plough itself, has not seemed to obtain that attention which 

 it deserves. Indeed, while constructed in the manner in which 

 are most of them now used, they will gain few golden opinions 

 from intelligent men. Their great objection lies in their 

 weight. They are too heavy and are moved too slowly. In 

 order to pulverize the soil thoroughly and leave it in fine and 

 delicate tilth, it is necessary to use a light harrow, with sharp 

 teeth, and to move it quickly over the ground. " If we exam- 

 ine a field, one half of which has been harrowed by weak, in- 

 efficient horses, and whose pace was consequently sluggish, 

 the other half by an adequate strength and swiftness of animal 

 power, we shall find the former will be rough and unfinished ; 

 the latter comparatively fine and level, and completed in what 

 would be called a husbandry -like manner." On meadow 

 sward, that is filled with roots of small bushes and coarse 

 grass, a light harrow with sharp teeth, moved rapidly over the 

 surface, cuts the roots apart and brings up the fine, light soil, 

 admirably prepared to receive grass seed ; while a heavy in- 

 strument, slowly moved, would turn up innumerable sods, and 

 do little towards pulverizing the surface. " Many would be sur- 



