INTRODUCTION. xvn 



Scotch plough was still worse, and in Scotland, where agricultural machinery is now most perfect, no 

 instance was known of ploughing with less than four horses. The usual number was six horses, or 

 tour horses and two oxen, and sometimes as many as ten or twelve were yoked to it, each requiring a 

 driver. William Dawson, soon after 1760, introduced the custom of ploughing with two horses abreast 

 with lilies.* 



Although the swing-plough is believed to have been the earliest used in Great Britain, one and 

 two wheel ploughs long used on the continent were most in favor. Turn-wrest ploughs, drill, drain, 

 and trenching ploughs, and others adapted to different uses, were employed in considerable variety. 



A capital improvement in the plough was the invention of the iron mould-board and landside. An 

 approach to this was made by Joseph Foljambre, of Rotherham, England, who hi 1720 took out Ihe 

 first patent of the kind recorded. It was for a mould-board and landside of wood sheathed with iron 

 plates, the share and coulter being made of wrought iron with steel edges. One of these patent or 

 Rotherham ploughs as all similar ones were called for many years was imported and used for some 

 time with much satisfaction by General Washington, but, becoming worn, our ploughwrights were 

 unable to repair it. The ploughs used in New England early in this century, and more recently in the 

 south, were of similar construction About the year 1740 James Small, of Berwickshire, in Scotland, 

 first introduced the cast-iron mould-board, still using wrought-iron shares. During fifty years he con 

 tinued to manufacture and improve the Scotch swing-plough, which, since made wholly of iron, has long 

 been regarded as the best in use in England. In 1785 Robert Ransome, of Ipswich, introduced cast- 

 iron shares, and about 1803 made improvements still in use, by making- the cutting edges of chilled 

 iron harder than steel, by casting them in moulds upon bars of cold iron. The making of the first iron 

 plough has been attributed to William Allan, a farmer of Lanarkshire, in Scotland, in 1804, but an iron 

 plough was presented to the Society of Arts in London as early as 1773, by a Mr. Brand. The cast-iron 

 plough was introduced soon after. Like most other improvements in rustic machinery, the iron ploughs, 

 though doing much superior work at less than half the expense of the clumsy wooden plough of that 

 date, came tardily into use. It is said that Sir Robert Peel, in 1835, having presented a farmers club 

 with two iron ploughs of the best construction, found on his next visit the old ploughs with wooden 

 mould-boards again at work ; &quot;Sir,&quot; said a member, &quot;we tried the iron, and be all of one mind, that they 

 made the weeds grow.&quot;\ A similar prejudice opposed the introduction of the first cast-iron plough in 

 America, patented in 1797 by Charles Newbold, of New Jersey, who, after spending, as he alleges, 

 $30,000 in trying to get it into use, abandoned the attempt, the farmers declaring that iron ploughs 

 poisoned the soil and prevented the growth of crops. 



The plough has received many improvements at the hands of Americans, and has become an article 

 of frequent exportation, while even in Great Britain the ploughs now used are generally made after 

 American models. The year 1617 is mentioned by an early annalist as the &quot;remarkable period of the 

 first introduction of the labor of the plough&quot; in Virginia. In 1625 we find the Dutch colony on the 

 Hudson supplied with &quot;all sorts of seeds, ploughs, and agricultural implements,&quot; to which in 1662 was 

 added a first-class wheel-plough, with its pulleys, &c., at a cost of sixty florins. In 1637 the colony of 

 Massachusetts contained but thirty ploughs, and Connecticut probably less than one-third the number. 

 Nevertheless, the same year a resident of Salem was promised an addition of twenty acres to his 

 original grant if he would &quot; set up ploughing.&quot; We involuntarily think of the steam-plough when we 

 read that another citizen of that town in the following year was allowed more land because he had 

 &quot;not sufficient ground to maintain a plough&quot; on his farm of 300 acres. Owing to the scarcity (if 

 mechanical labor, most of the ploughs and other farm utensils were for a long time made on the farm, 

 with the aid of the nearest smith. The casting of plough-irons was done at nearly every small foundry. 

 Their make was, of course, clumsy and inefficient Among the kinds still remembered by many was 

 the Gary plough, with clumsy wrought-iron share, wooden landside and standard, and wooden mould-board 



c McCulloeh s Statistics of BritUh Empiiu. 

 3 f I hilps History of Progress in Great Britain. 



