PLOWING— SINGLE TEAMS. •^ 



patterns will sleep with us, to be no more tlionght of 

 then, than the root, or hog plow of the ancients is now. 

 Let no farmer therefore be contented with any model 

 now in use, but always strive to add still greater per- 

 fection and beauty to this primary indispensable instru- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



Before announcing the premiums, it is due to the 

 Society to lay down one cardinal principle which has 

 governed your Committee in awarding them, namely — 

 the dispensing altogether with the whipping process; 

 upon this point your Committee are a unit, and we crave 

 your indulgence while we dwell a little more at length 

 upon this head. 



The objects of the Plowing Match are not, like those 

 of the Grecian Olympic games, the mere naked test of 

 agility or strength. Much as those games of the ancients 

 might develope the physical man, they had no moral 

 bearing, or it was so remote as to be lost in the coarser 

 instincts of brute speed or force. A Grecian whose 

 cranial work shop would hardly admit of brains enough 

 to describe the difference between a plow and a harrow, 

 a yoke about the neck of the ox, or strap around his 

 head might wear the laurel crown and rejoice in the 

 palm of victory ; whereas the intelligent plowman who 

 now wears that palm must be master of his own actions, 

 guiding his plow with the greatest skill and care,and under 

 the exercise of that dominion over the beasts of the field, 

 which God Almighty has given him through the medi- 

 um of the mind implanted within him, must display it, 

 under its most perfect discipline and effect ; an effect 

 obtained in the highest degree too, by carrying out in 

 its fullest purity the great principle which the Supreme 



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