Proceedtngs of the Farmers' Club. 5^9 



for more or less friable and loose soils. These trench plows may, 

 and doubtless will be, made adapted to the strength of one pair of 

 cattle on light soils, working perfectly to the depth of eight to 

 fourteen inches. Their office is thorough trenching, which is where 

 the subsoil is brought up in mass and the fertile soil is thrown 

 down in mass, the position of the two different strata being 

 reversed with the unfertile portion at the surface, to be brought 

 into fertility by enrichment and amendment. Trenching is gene- 

 rally deeper than half-trenching, but not necessarily so. These 

 trench plows are heavier than they need to be, for the curves are 

 easy, the friction is at the minimum, and the furrow slice moves 

 into the appointed position with very little disturbance. The 

 beams are made of good Yorktown oak, both tough and stiff, with 

 all the imperfections carefully covered up with paint. I don't know 

 that any of these gentlemen, with the exception of Mr. Greeley and 

 a few who have spoken and written, ever want to plow any deeper 

 than my Putnam county neighbors, with the original two and a half 

 D, and its five-inch slice; but if you do, all that I need to say is, 

 that the plows are made at the Peekskill Plow Works, Peekskill, 

 N. Y., a factory founded by the worthy Truman Minor, in the year 

 1826, who nearly forty years ago whittled his ideas about plows 

 into patterns that have been more used and copied, and are to-day 

 more in use, than any plows in the world. Upon application, a 

 price list, and any other information in connection with the plows, 

 will be furnished. At any rate, you need not hesitate hereafter to 

 form any system of deep working through fear of the great cost of 

 the operation, which was inherent to the use of the spade, and there- 

 fore unavoidable, as that implement was the immediate ancestor of 

 the lona deep-working plows. 



At the conclusion of the paper, Mr. A. S. Fuller said, by way of 

 illustrating the good effects of trenching, he wished to show two 

 raspberry plants of the same age and variety. One had been grown 

 in a trenched soil, the other not; the roots of the former were 

 three or four times as large as those of the latter. He said he 

 did not think the roots always plunge deeper in a soft soil^ but 

 they do grow larger, produce larger plants and better fruit and 

 more of it. 



Mr. Horace Greeley. — I differ with Mr. Fuller. The roots will 

 go down for moisture if they cannot get it on the surface. In Cali- 

 fornia, after the second year, vines stand the drouth, because by 

 that time the roots are where the moisture is. 



