132 



POWER AND THE PLOW 



Plow from Asia Minor 



of the Nile shows no improvement over the plows of five 

 thousand years ago; in Mexico and Spain the wooden plow of 

 the Moors outnumbers the steel plow of America; all of our 

 civilization lies this side of the stick-plow of the Cingalese. 



The first plows for brute power were made wholly from the 

 natural crooks of the branches of trees, each with a brace added 



to strengthen the union 

 between the beam and the 

 upright share. Pins in the 

 forepart of the beam con- 

 nected it with the square 

 yoke then used on draft 

 oxen, and a natural crook 

 gave the plowman a handle for guiding. Such were the plows 

 used by Job and Ulysses. 



Three thousand years before the Christian Era the Egyptians 

 had evolved a broader, triangular share to take a wider furrow 

 than the plow of Asia Minor just described. Two handles in 

 place of one made it easier to guide. The plow used by Cin- 

 cinnatus and Cato was an improvement over a still older 

 form used in the days of the Tarquins. Their plow for a 

 long time seemed incapable of improvement. Virgil, in his 

 Georgics, describes the plow of his day, which coincides with 

 the earlier descriptions. It had a point made of two pieces of 

 wood meeting at an acute angle. An iron plate covered the 

 point, and two pins, or teeth, set obliquely, one into each leg 

 of the angle, performed the office of a moldboard in lifting and 

 pulverizing the soil. 



In Britain an implement called the caschrom served the 

 early husbandmen, and 

 was in use in the Hebrides 

 and the Isle of the Sky 

 until late in the nineteenth 

 century. A single curved 

 piece of wood, the lower Javanese stick plow 



