294 



Ploughs and Ploughing. 



a wheeled implement like a cart ; but the nearer the line of 

 draught is at right angles to the line of the shoulder, the more 

 comfortably will the horse work, and the less liability will there 

 be to charing or shoulder-slip. 



The amount of the draught, measured in pounds or cwts. by 

 a dynamometer, is a point of much interest. It varies very 

 much according to the kind of plough, the nature of the soil, 

 and, of course, the size of the furrow-slice. The extremes for 

 an ordinary two-horse single plough are from about 2 cwt. up to 

 6 cwt. A modern plough with chilled steel wearing parts, and 

 in light, sandy stubble land, can be pulled with a force of less 

 than 2 cwt. as registered by a dynamometer, with a furrow of, 

 say, 9 inches wide by 5 inches deep, this being equal to, say, 

 5 lb. per square inch of sectional area of furrow-slice. On the 

 other hand, the writer has just been testing the plough he uses 

 at present — a Canadian with chilled steel breast and two-wheeled 

 — on a stubble after fallow on the Essex clay, and with a furrow- 

 slice of 9 by 5 inches the draught is about 6 cwt., rising at 

 times to 8, i.e., at least 1 5 lb. per square inch of sectional area. 

 This is, perhaps, the extreme of comfortable draught for even 

 two powerful Clydesdale or Shire horses ; more than this would 

 necessitate the use of a third horse, as is the case on " three-horse 

 land," for 3 cwt. per horse is about the limit for continuous 

 work with an average animal. 



The Mouldboard. 



Within the last twenty years the greatest change has been 

 in the fitting of the mouldboard itself. In the olden time this 

 literally was a board, covered with iron to make it wear longer, 

 while more recently it was made of cast iron from a carefully- 

 made pattern, and our grandfathers, and even our fathers, pro- 

 cured the implement from their nearest blacksmith. The 

 friction on these old rough cast iron wrests was fearful. The 

 writer served his apprenticeship at the tail of one such arrange- 

 ment, and well remembers how it took a week's ploughing of 

 a loamy soil to put a smooth polished surface on it. The 

 cast iron board is not yet banished — as he unfortunately knows, 

 for prejudice dies hard among farmers and labourers — though 

 it is now filed and ground to a smooth surface before being sent 



