184 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



picture to my mind's eye, and banished, in its turn, 

 before ever engraver's tool had given it outward form 

 and semblance. If ploughing were ever done by 

 steam, that were no doubt an obvious way, and 

 as good a way as any. But I hold it to be an idea 

 fundamentally erroneous to attempt to combine steam- 

 machinery with the plough ; and record my convic- 

 tion, that until the idea of the plough, and, in a word, 

 of all Z>rawy ^-cultivation is utterly abandoned, no 

 effective progress will be made in the application of 

 Steam to the tilling of the earth. I repeat that 

 " ploughing " is a mere contrivance for applying animal 

 power to tillage. Get out of animal power and you 

 leave " ploughing " behind altogether. Get into steam- 

 power, and you have no more to do with the plough, 

 than a Horse has to do with a spade. It is no essen- 

 tial whatever of cultivation that it should be done by 

 the traction of the implement. Spade-work is perpen- 

 dicular. Horse-work is horizontal. Machine-work 

 is rotatory. 



1 Who would noAv dream of retaining the form of 

 the Flail in the Threshing-machine, or that of the 

 Oar in a Steam-ship, or of putting the Piston-rod to 

 work at the end of a Pump-handle ? Yet doubt- 

 less these piebald attempts were all made in their 



