1088 



Ploughing and Ploughing Matches. 



[Mar. 



staple depth .... Instances might be multiplied; but the fact is obvious, 

 that furrows may be well turned to the eye, but yet bad work made. 



"Another circumstance of equal importance .... is, to consider how well 

 the construction of a plough is adapted to the peculiar soil or crop, which is 

 the object of the experiment .... By consequence .... the merits of a 

 plough will not be appreciated, if such variations be not in contemplation; and 

 that plough considered as the best which is adapted to the most uses .... 



" The team does not seem to carry much difficulty in the way of a fair 

 decision; the expense of keeping horses and oxen, or asses, or mules, should 

 be carefully calculated, the interest of their first cost estimated, their duration 

 and liability to disease included, and the expense thus deduced of performing 

 a given portion of work, as merit here is all included in cheapness. But in 

 ascertaining what this portion really is in any trial; that is, the quantum of 

 power exerted; there are great difficulties, if the furrow turned by every plough 

 be not very nearly of the same dimensions: a circumstance that clearly 

 appeared in the trials of ploughs by the Society of Arts, in which the draught 

 was ascertained by means of a coiled spring, with an index of the hundred 

 weights applied in drawing. Probably this difficulty will render it advisable, 

 in such trials, that the furrow to be opened be previously specified; allowing 

 a breadth sufficiently proportioned to the depth required." 



A full account of the trials carried out by the Society of Arts 

 had appeared in the first volume of the Annals of Agriculture * 

 under the title, " Experiments to ascertain the force necessary 

 to draw various ploughs." The instrument used was a spring 

 dynamometer such as is still employed for measurements of no 

 great refinement. It was invented by Mr. Samuel More, the 

 Secretary to the Society, with a view to determining the merits 

 of an iron plough which had been submitted by Mr. John Brand 

 for a bounty. Six ploughs in all were tried : — the Rotherham 

 plough; two ploughs of Mr. Arbuthnot's. described merely as 

 *' red " and "blue"; Mr. Ducket's trenching plough; the 

 common Surrey plough; and the new iron plough. Twenty tests 

 were carried out, with furrows of different depths, and with 

 weights added to certain of the ploughs to bring them up to the 

 weight of others; the draught was registered in fractions of cwt. 

 Mr. Brand was given a bounty, but Mr. Arbuthnot's plough was 

 " beyond all doubt the best."^ 



The conclusions drawn by the Committee, as Arthur Young 

 said, " deserve no slight attention " : — 



; ' It appears that the weight of the plough is of little consequence, very 

 contrary to common ideas; that heaviness is even an advantage oftener than 

 the contrary; and that in some instances to a surprising degree. The weight 

 of the plough is the least part of the horses' labour: the great object is the 

 resistance met with in the cohesion of the earth: lightness does nothing to 



* p. 113. 



