MACHINERY OF THE CLAYS. 231 



dry, have been too much perverted to the result 

 of making the agriculturist a Jack-of-all-trades. He 

 goes out of a light-soil farm into a clay, or vice versa, 

 and plunges his share into the new element with 

 about as much unconcern as his wife puts her duck- 

 eggs under a hen to be hatched and educated. Plump 

 goes the little brood of changelings into the first pool 

 of water, incontinently bent on their baptism of native 

 mud, to the consternation of the astounded mother, 

 who vainly plies her claw in scratching on the sandy 

 shore for unsuited food, croaking out her frantic 

 warnings to the contumacious family of webfoot. 

 With about as intelligent a philosophy as she exhibits 

 under such distressful and hopeless circumstances, has 

 many a plough been stuck into the clays. But no- 

 thing can express the truth in shorter phrase than 



that of old Dobson 



* I tell you, Sir, it's a different trade! ' 

 No wonder then that ' the best form of the Plough 

 is still matter of disagreement.' It must ever be so, 

 as long as Clay and Sand are things as opposed in 

 nature to each other as positive and negative. A stiff 

 clay under a moist climate, the greater its mechanical 

 disadvantage, and its intrinsic chemical superiority, 



