1922.] 



Ploughing and Ploughing Matches. 



1089 



overcome this; it is effected by just proportions only. If a plough is not made 

 on true principles, the lightness is prejudicial by adding to the unsteadiness of 

 all ill-made ploughs. 



" It also appears very decidedly, that the share should be nearly, if not 

 quite as broad in the fin, as the plough is wide in the heel, in order that all the 

 furrow may be cut, and not torn up by force." 



Ploughing matches appear to have sprung up at about the 

 same date that the dynamometer was invented. The present 

 writers have found no certain reference to ploughing matches 

 earlier than 1784, when the Odiham Agricultural Society held 

 a competition on the Tuesday of Whitsun week, and a prize 

 of three guineas was awarded to the " ploughman that 

 ploughed the best within a given time to be determined by the 

 stewards." Other prizes were given to the boy driving the 

 horses and to the two next best ploughmen and to the boys 

 employed with them.* Similar matches then became not in- 

 frequent, but it is clear from Arthur Young's anticipation in 

 1797 of " the vast effect of such annual meetings, were they 

 to take place in various other districts of the kingdom, as well 

 as Sussex "t that he was then acquainted with but few. 



It was not to be expected that all societies would have Arthur 

 Young's wide vision or insist upon the number of factors for 

 which allowance should be made in comparing ploughs and 

 ploughing. Good work, as judged by conventional standards, 

 was a thing easily to be understood, as was also the reduction 

 in the strength of the team (a rough and ready indication of 

 draught) and the possibility of dispensing with the driver. All 

 these points were clearly of importance, while none but 

 powerful and wealthy societies could be expected to concern 

 themselves with scientific refinements. 



The evidence of contemporary witnesses is overwhelming 

 that ploughing matches had an immense effect in raising the 

 skill of the ploughmen and reducing the working expenses. 



" These ploughing matches," said Francis Erskine, " raise such emulation 

 amongst the youth, that a gentleman has assured me, that, when travelling 

 along the road, he has seen a young lad, (who was ploughing without any 

 person in the field with him), as soon as he came to the end of the furrow, stop, 

 and look back on his work; and on his perceiving part not done to his mind, 

 that he immediately turned, took his plough to the spot, and endeavoured to 

 rectify the error with great <*arnestness."l 



* Annals of Agriculture.. Ill, 50. 



f Annals of Agriculture, XXIX, 520. Prizes were at this period given on 

 other tests of excellence, as, for example, a prize of " five guineas and a silver 

 cup by the Bath Society in 1784 for ploughing 442 acres of land with a pair 

 of horses without a driver": ibid., Ill, 50. 



t Annals of Agriculture, XXIX, 332. 



C 



