PLOUGHING. 127 



rLYMOUTII. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



Our ploughing matches are mainly practical, perhaps too 

 much so ; and we think it might be well in the future, to allow 

 each competitor to plough the lot assigned him in his own 

 time, and in his own way, — to make liis furrows shallow or 

 deep, to cut them wide or narrow, to leave them flat or 

 inclined — giving him an opportunity of stating to the commit- 

 tee, if he chooses to do so, his reasons for preferring his pecu- 

 liar method of ploughing to all others. Under our present 

 system, the competitor, however competent he maybe to decide 

 such- questions, has nothing to do with the comparative advan- 

 tages of the different modes of breaking tlie soil. He is 

 merely to plough a given area, to a given depth, in a given 

 time, the conditions being previously fixed beyond his control, 

 and the committee have only to judge of his success or failure 

 in fulfilling these conditions ; in other words, to decide as to 

 the fitnesss of his plough, the training of his team, and the 

 skill and efficiency manifested in holding the one and guiding 

 the other. 



Tlie mere theorist would say that the plough of this or that 

 particular model, having upon it this or that particular stamp 

 or device, and made by this or that particular manufacturer, is 

 alone reliable. The practical farmer selects that plough whose 

 work is most satisfactorily performed in the kind of soil where 

 it is chiefly to be used. A plough which is precisely adapted 

 to the silex of its owner's " barn field," or to the alumina of 

 his " nook pasture," may make but sorry work in the friable 

 loam of the Agricultural Society's grounds. Hence, many a 

 man, whose furrows on his own hill-sides or in his own valleys 

 are faultless, finds his work here the subject of disparaging 

 remark or of open ridicule, and that, too, without fault or 

 neglect on his part. 



No ploughman can make perfect work without a well-trained 

 team; a team prompt to catch, from the slightest .motion or 

 sound, tlie intention and wish of the driver ; a team having, 

 as some animals seem to have, and others never have — a sort 

 of intuitive perception of the desirableness of an even yoke or 

 whiflle-bar ; of the economy of a " bee line " in the furrow, 



