“Cees 
It is among the inscrutable dispensations of Pro- 
vidence, that the arts most useful to man, have been 
of later discovery—of slower growth, and of less 
marked improvement, than those that aimed only 
at his destruction. At a time when the phalanx 
and the legion were invented and perfected, and 
when the instruments they employed were various 
and powerful, those of agriculture continued to - 
few and simple, and inefficient. 
Of the Greek plough, we know nothing ; and the 
general disuse of that described by Virgil and Pliny, 
furnishes a degree of evidence, that experience has 
found it incompetent to its objects. With even the 
boasted lights of modern knowledge, scientific men 
are not agreed upon the form and proportions most 
proper for this instrument. Asin other cases, so in 
this, there may be no abstract perfection ; what is 
best in one description of soil, may not be so in an- 
other; yet, as in all soils, the office of the plough 
is the same, viz. to cleave and turn over the earth, 
there cannot but be some definite shape and propor- 
tions, better fitted for these purposes, and at the 
same time less susceptible of resistance, than any 
other. 
This beau ideal, this suppositious excellence, in 
the mechanism of a plough, has been the object of 
great national, as well as individual research. In 
Great Britain, high prizes have been established for 
its attainment; and in France, under the ministry 
of Chaptal, 10,000 francs, or $2000, were offered for 
this object, by the agricultural society of the Seine. 
In both countries, the subject has employed many 
