196 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



each hand or claw with its separate arm forming the 

 radius from a central shaft, which bristles all around 

 with a forest of such arms, a sort of revolving 

 BRIAREUS, not rolling let that be especially remem- 

 bered but steam-driven, a thousand rfo^-power if 

 you please, for we must not even mention horses, or 

 we shall drop back into the old Scylla and Charybdis 

 of ' traction ' and of 'rolling/ two ideas to be es- 

 chewed like poison. 



Let us suppose the picture of this formidable- 

 looking cylinder of claws to be sufficiently described, 

 for the moment reminding one at a distant view, 

 of a half-breed between a hay-tedding machine and a 

 CROSSKILL'S clod-crusher but unlike them, funda- 

 mentally distinct from any and every instrument that 

 was ever seen afield, as doing its work not by traction, 

 not by its rolling weight, but DRIVEN by its axis, as 

 the steam-paddle, the circular-saw, the driving-wheel 

 of the locomotive, are driven, supported by its own 

 apparatus, and abrading the soil with its armed teeth, 

 first cutting its own trench, burying itself to the re- 

 quired depth, and then commencing its ownward task, 

 tearing down the bank (so to speak) on the advancing 

 side, canting back the abraded soil, earth's sawdust, 

 " comminuted, aerated, inverted " into the trench it 

 leaves behind. 



