THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 215 



could conveniently accommodate for annual Exhi- 

 bition. A revolution impending over Tillage itself 

 was of course the last thing dreamt of. It is ever so. 

 True, a few black funnels might be seen smoking in 

 the show-yard, and the whirling drum of the steam- 

 driven Threshing-machine had, thanks to the previous 

 invention of a certain Scotch lawyer, made the 

 agrestial mind forget to expect, or its prizes to 

 stimulate, improvements in the Flail. But the prin- 

 cipal and tune-honoured act of agriculture proper, 

 of cultivation itself, still laboured under its ancient 

 tribe of horse-adapted implements. The Plough and 

 the Harrow were still in the ascendant: the instru- 

 ments 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 

 anticipated 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 " Prosperity to Agri- 

 culture." 



( Yet it can hardly be wondered at,' our aggra- 

 vating Critic will continue, e that men should have 

 slowly and with such difficulty eradicated from their 



