212 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



teeth of a circular saw, and could find room in his 

 imaginative faculty for the contemplation of this 

 mechanical process, side by side with the agricultural 

 fact that a seed-bed is only a layer of comminuted 

 soil a few inches in depth, might surely (one should 

 now suppose) have saved the credit of his generation 

 by some more congenial suggestion for the effectuating 

 of tillage by Steam-power, than attempting to bind 

 it down to an apprenticeship in which Ploughs and 

 Harrows, Rollers and Scufflers, or even the spade, 

 were still to figure as the rude terms of the Indenture, 

 as out of keeping with its genius and aptitude, as 

 they were irrelevant and non-essential to tillage itself 

 analytically regarded, apart from its conventional 

 modes necessitated by horse or hand-power.' 



Such will be the kind of after reflection thrown back 

 upon his forefathers of this generation by our future 

 agricultural historian. ( It is true/ he will be obliged 

 to add, ' there were not wanting heaps of patents and 

 pretensions crowding in confused succession on the 

 public notice, during this period of mental vacuity 

 and decrepitude of invention. Wherever there is a 

 lack of grain there are plenty of weeds to fill the 

 gaping space. There were plough-dragging engines, 

 stationary and locomotive, there were ' ploughshares 



