THE PLAIN 'ENGLISH' OF IT. 181 



abrasion, into a semicircular trench about a foot an 

 a half wide, throwing back the pulverized soil (as it 

 flies back from the feet of a dog scratching at a rab- 

 bit-hole) : then imagine the locomotive moving for- 

 ward on the hard ground with a slow and equable 

 mechanical motion, the revolver behind, with its cut- 

 ting-points (case-hardened) playing upon the edge, or 

 land-side of the trench as it advances, and capable of 

 any adjustment to coarse or fine cutting; moving 

 always forward and leaving behind granulated and 

 inverted, by its revolving action, a seed-bed seven or 

 eight inches deep, never to be gone over again by any 

 after-implement except the drill, which had much 

 better follow at once, attached behind with a light 

 brush-harrow to cover the seed. 



It is hard, by mere language and without a dia- 

 gram, to describe intelligibly to the mind's eye an 

 instrument that has not been seen ; however it may 

 have become familiar to my own. My notion may 

 be wrong, but I am strongly induced to feel that such 

 an instrument alone will ever fulfil the requisitions of 

 the steam-engine, which shortens and remodels every 

 labour it undertakes, and never condescends to old 

 appliances, except where they are themselves intrin- 

 sically perfect in their mode of action. 



