208 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY^ FARM. 



adapted implements. The Plough and the Harrow 

 were still in the ascendant : the instruments of 

 equine-tillage were still received as its essential 

 agents; and people who would have smiled at the 

 mechanical curiosity of a steam-Flail, gravely anti- 

 cipated the day when some such combination would 

 be triumphantly achieved for the darling tool whose 

 Heaven-invoked 'speed' had long supplied the toast 

 and figure-head of Agricultural Prosperity. 



' Yet it can hardly be wondered at/ our aggravating 

 Critic will continue, 'that men should have slowly 

 and with such difficulty eradicated from their minds 

 a mode of tillage so long compelled by the very nature 

 and necessity of animal-power : every child that has 

 wept and smiled over the ' Death of Cock-robin ' 

 knows when he hears 



"Who '11 toll the bell? 

 ' I ' says the Bull. 

 ' Because I c&npull,'" 



that Mr. Bull was guilty of a pun; that the 'pull' of 

 a quadruped is only horizontal ; that his strength can 

 be applied in no other way ; and that when you em- 

 ploy a four-footed beast to cultivate the soil you have 

 no choice left but horizontal traction, from one end 01 

 the field to the other ; a mode of action which com- 



