238 BOAED OF AGtMCULTURE. 



the gods, and dreading, as they did, the enmity of any of 

 the gods, and especially of the goddess Ceres, so important 

 to their material welfare, hesitated for this reason in making 

 even such changes as might occur to them as desirable in the 

 plow. This is a reasonable supposition, I say. At all 

 events, from the time Hesiod wrote, seven or eight hundred 

 years before Christ, until Virgil wrote, just about the time of 

 the Christian era, there eeems to have been absolutely no 

 change. The written descriptions of the plow as it was then 

 used, one in Greek and the other in Latin, are almost iden- 

 tical. And for a long time after that we find substantially 

 no progress in the development of the plow. It appears that 

 they did change the use of the principle of the wedge ; for 

 whereas, in the time of Virgil, the wedge ran horizontally 

 and simply raised the earth, loosening it and dropping it 

 substantially where it was before, the wedge was turned on 

 edge along somewhere in the Dark Ages, when we have very 

 little record ; and when the plow reappeared, as described 

 about the time of William the Conqueror, the wedge was set 

 up on edge, so that the earth was thrown sometimes one side, 

 sometimes the other, according as the plow was used, for 

 they do not seem to have made much distinction between a 

 right and left hand plow, according to the illustrations that 

 are given. 



Then again, we have old calendars of somewhere in the 

 eleventh century still in existence, which give rough repre- 

 sentations of the plow, and there for the first time appears 

 the coulter. So we may date that improvement from that 

 time. It is about 700 years since the coulter first appeared 

 attached to a plow. Very nearly at that time wheels were 

 used for guiding the plow. The wheels preceded the plow, 

 and instead of the implement being guided directly by the 

 animals at the head of the team, it was guided by these 

 wheels. The animals were harnessed with long strips and 

 traces, which are described in some cases as being made of 

 the skin of whales, and the traces were attached to the axle, 

 and drew directly from it. The wheels were small, and 

 the beam of the plow was lashed to the centre of this axle. 

 The wheels assisted in some dcOTce in the draught and in reg- 

 ulating the depth of the plowing. At this time it is found that 



