Proceedings of the Farmers* Club. 517 



fertilized, double production will be insured. I do not believe 

 that any other plow in the country will work the soil so thoroughy 

 and to such a depth as this plow of Dr. Grant's. 



Mr. Brown then read an interesting account of the manner in 

 which Dr. Grant had modeled the plows, and he gave a full and 

 interesting description of their construction : 



Contrivances for deejp plowing. — To the old plow manufactory at 

 Peekskill many letters have come during the past six or seven years, 

 asking for deep-working plows. Among twelve hundred different 

 sorts and sizes, we had none that would plow more than twelve inches 

 deep, though some contained nearly as much superficies as the plows 

 now exhibited, but they were expensive, and trimmed furrows from 

 one-third to one-half wider than the thickness of the slice. No plows 

 in this country had been made that would run any deeper than ours. 

 With the exception of the Jersey plow, which plowed but little if 

 any deeper, and with greater draft than our large plows, no deep 

 working plows had been made in foreign countries. The subsoil 

 raised a little space, and dropped unmixed back again by the second 

 passage of a wide turning plow, or of a common subsoil plow, waa 

 the extent of " tickling " to which the earth was liable from any 

 existing plow. About a year ago, Dr. C. W. Grant came to us, 

 saying that he had a burden on his mind of a duty to be performed 

 for more than thirty years; that he dreaded to undertake it, but 

 that if he should not succeed in doing it in 1867, he did not think 

 that he would ever be able to do it. When we looked into his 

 plans and at his grey hairs and infirm health, we thought so, too, 

 and we gave him all the facilities that we could for fixing his ideas 

 in wood and iron. We could not make his Delaware grapes grow 

 large, but we made his beans grow great and strong. The pecu- 

 liarity of these plows consist in the narrow waist, or inclined plane 

 between the point of the share and the commencement of the lines 

 that give the turning motion to the furrow slice. The doctor 

 searched among all our diflferent shapes of mould and the accumu- 

 lation of forty years of incessant pattern-making share, and took 

 many row-boat loads of plows to his island for study and trial. 

 He finally selected the short, stout, sheep-stubbed plow, known 

 among the democratic tillers of the rocky soil of Putnam county, 

 and other similar places, as two and a half D, in its original shape, 

 as made with a wooden beam, as the base of his deep-working 

 plows. This two and a half D is scarcely ever used to turn a thick- 

 ness of more than five inches. This plow, after making slight alte- 



