66 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



work and movement, accomplishes no more than was effected 

 by a machine in common use among the ancient Gauls, and 

 described by Roman authors. The winnowing machine of 

 modern times is based upon an idea borrowed from the machine 

 invented by the Chinese for cleaning rice. Mr. Dickson, a 

 standard author upon the husbandry of the ancients, says they 

 used all the different ploughs now used in England. Harrows 

 and cultivators are of equal antiquity with the plough. Both 

 drill husbandry, which is now recognized as of great value in the 

 economy of seed and manures, and the sowing machine, which 

 is no more than a necessary corrollary of drill husbandry, were 

 in common use among the farmers of China, Japan and Arabia. 

 Guano has been known as a fertilizer for two hundred years. 

 A late historian of the papal states declared that agricultural 

 science has not been carried so high by the farmers in Scotland 

 as by the Romans more than two thousand years ago. Even 

 our cautious maxims about experiments are inculcated by 

 ancient writers as strongly as by our own. It is not supposed 

 that in this time no improvements have been made. We have 

 not however improved upon the characteristics of Roman cul- 

 ture, which were system, accuracy and great vigilance against 

 waste ; but in results we have substituted a constant increase, 

 for the diminished product of which their writers complain. 

 And we are entirely relieved from that superstitious thraldom 

 of mind that made agricultural projects dependent upon lunar 

 and siderial influence, or required before sowing seed, that 

 the hopper should be lined with the skin of a hyena.. It 

 is not the fact that we are better employed and better paid, to 

 which we invite attention, but that the machinery exhibited to 

 us now as startling novelties, is in idea at least identical with 

 that used in Cliina, and Gaul, and Rome, thousands of years 

 ago. Could mechanical aids — so important as we must admit 

 these to be — have been so long excluded from manufactures or 

 commerce had they been equally serviceable as in agriculture ? 

 Is it not clear that some discouragement has weighed against 

 their admission in this branch of industry ; something like an 

 unreasonable adherence to the tradition of the past '? Do we 

 not see even now with what reluctance many intelligent farmers 

 admit the possibility of improvement upon the old methods of 

 husbandry ? 



