THE ' STEAM-CULTIVATOR/ 197 



If I have failed in making the picture clear or in- 

 telligible, it is yet not that about which I care so 

 much, as to " draw aside the curtain." The idea of 

 ploughing and digging stands like a thick blind be- 

 fore the whole philosophy of the subject, and screens 

 the inventive mechanician from the simple applica- 

 tion of his mind to the quod est faciendum. His 

 faculties are clogged, stupified, held in check by the 

 pestering contemplation of processes that enter not 

 necessarily into the problem to be solved, nor need 

 appear in its solution. They are unessential to the 

 matter. They became so the very instant the steam- 

 engine was discovered ; a power, and the only one we 

 possess, that can be carried to the field, and put into 

 an agricidtural machine like the main-spring into a 

 watch to give it independent intrinsic action within 

 itself, owing nothing to, but separate entirely from, 

 the traction and progression of the implement along 

 the field. Hitherto there is not even the attempt so 

 to apply it ; it has never had a chance. Every field- 

 implcment we have, works by traction like the Pe- 

 dometer that ticks because the wearer marches ; but 

 with steam for our mainspring we can make the 

 watch tick, independent of the wearer. When we 

 understand that, when we have in idea and in fact 

 detached the work of cultivation from the mere pro- 



