No. 244.] 309 



Those who read Lindley, Gray, Torrey, Beck, or Decandolle, \vi]J 

 understand it as a scientific fact well known, and the 47th problem 

 of Euclid might as well be claimed now for a novelty. 



Mr. Meigs introduced to the Club, Nathaniel Sands, an aged Qua- 

 ker, who desired to speak of the first cast iron plough and Charles 

 Newbold its inventor. Mr. Sands said that he and many other citi- 

 zens, who are now seventy and eighty years of age, remembered 

 Charles Newbold, a man of excellent character, who some fifty years 

 ago became enthusiastically devoted to the project of an iron plouc^h. 

 He had contrived to cast the plough with such a form as then was 

 unknown for excellence. — He obtained a patent which was exhibited 

 to the Club, dated, June 26, 1797; but he had invented it as far back 

 as 1790. Newbold spent several years and an estate of about twenty 

 thousand dollars, in the attempt to introduce his cast iron plough. 



He finally became poor, discouraged, and finally ended his days 

 in a Lunatic Asylum. Mr. Sands had never heard it doubted that 

 Newbold was the first man who invented the cast iron plouo-h. Be- 

 fore his time, the hog plough was used — so called because of its 

 very irregular movement in and out of the ground, like the rooting 

 of a hog. 



Newbold's plough was at first liable to break, and the blacksmiths 

 were loth to mend it. The mould board and land side were cast 

 whole. Mr. Sands paid ten dollars a piece for two of Newbold's 

 ploughs, and used them in Orange county, and then considered them 

 to be the very best plough he had ever handled. Mr. Sands said 

 that this cast iron Newbold plough was the very basis of all the 

 cast iron ploughs since made; that it was an excellent model, and 

 all the improvements since made were based upon it; that Wood's 

 patent was for an improvement of the plan of attaching the share. 

 Newbold at last added a steel edged share to his cast iron mould 

 board and land side. Thomas Jefferson tried Newbold's plough at 

 Washington — approved of it and set himself to inventino- a scienti- 

 fic mould board. 



Mr. Meigs thought that, although the nation might object to the 

 long continued monopolies of patents, yet that in every case of distin- 

 guished benefit conferred by any ingenious citizen upon his country, 

 it was a duty, and one which would prove to be profitable to the 

 nation, to mark that worthy citizen by a suitable present. 



Mr. W^akeman moved that a committee of three te appointed to 

 examine the claim of Mr. Newbold. 



