XIV 

 THE PLOW IN GREAT BRITAIN 



THE Dutch, owing to the difficult conditions to be 

 met in their lowlands, were among the first really 

 to improve upon the primitive Roman plows. 

 They evolved a moldboard which twisted and 

 turned aside the furrow, and protected the wooden parts 

 from ground friction by a covering of iron. The revival of 

 interest in agriculture in England in the early part of the 

 eighteenth century turned concerted attention toward the 

 improvement of the plow. Some of the Dutch plows imported 

 about this time were copied by English makers. The first 

 of these, known as the Rotherham plow, was made by Joseph 

 Foljambe, of Yorkshire, who received letters patent in 

 1720. Foljambe J s plow, as afterward made by Staniforth, was 

 of wood, with a short-lived sheet-metal covering. The point 

 was conical, rather than sharply chiseled, and burrowed rather 

 than cut its way. A bridle, or clevis, was provided for the 

 first time so the point might be set for depth and either to or 

 from the land. The vertical and horizontal wedges were 

 combined in the moldboard and connected by a curved line, 

 so that the furrow slice was first raised a little and gradually 

 inverted clear of the space in which it lay. 



Jethro Tull, published in 1731, the first edition of his "New 

 Horse Houghing Husbandry." In this work, the outgrowth of 

 his travels and experiments, he set forth radically new theories. 

 He emphasized the beneficial effects of tillage after the sowing of 

 the crop, the current practice being to perform the entire work 



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