188 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAEM. 



flies back from the feet of a dog scratching at a 

 rabbit-hole): then imagine the locomotive moving 

 forward on the hard ground with a slow and equable 

 mechanical motion, the revolver behind, with its 

 cutting-points (case-hardened) playing upon the edge 

 or land-side of the trench as it advances, and capable 

 of any adjustment to coarse or fine cutting; moving 

 always forward, and leaving behind, granulated and 

 inverted by its revolving action, a seed-bed seven or 

 eight- inches deep, never to be gone over again by any 

 after-implement except the drill, which had much 

 better follow at once, attached behind with a light 

 brush-harrow to cover the seed. 



'It is hard, by mere language and without a 

 diagram, to describe intelligibly to the mind's eye an 

 instrument that has not been seen ; familiar as it has 

 become to my own. My notion may be wrong, but 

 I am strongly induced to feel that such an instru- 

 ment alone will ever fulfil the requisitions of the 

 steam-engine, which shortens and remodels every 

 labour it undertakes, and never condescends to old 

 appliances, except where they are themselves in- 

 trinsically perfect in their mode of action. 



' Why did Steam reject the Pump-handle and the 

 Oar ? Because, in both, the leverage is obtained by 



