Ploughs and Ploughing. 



simply a custom. As far as the ability to handle the horses 

 or the implement is concerned there might just as well be 

 three or four animals pulling it, with a corresponding size of 

 plough, or a double or triple set of breasts. Our Colonial 

 and American competitors have thrown all these hidebound 

 traditions and customs to the winds, and have gone in for 

 double, triple, quadruple, and any higher number of furrow 

 ploughs, drawn by a corresponding number of horses, and all 

 controlled by one man. They have, of course, large fields, or 

 wide stretches of land for their use, but it is the adoption 

 of these forms that is one of the factors in their cheap 

 production of all kinds of crop, and we could most certainly 

 partly adopt them here in many cases. On heavy land, of 

 course, a single furrow-slice 9 inches wide by about 5 inches 

 deep is about enough for a pair of horses to tackle with the 

 ordinary old-fashioned ploughs, but with modern ploughs, and 

 in fairly free-working land, three horses could quite well pull a 

 double-furrow plough, and, indeed, in some instances it is done. 

 Why double- and even triple-furrow ploughs have not " caught 

 on " better than they have is not easy to explain, though there 

 are two reasons which are apparent. One is that in the past 

 a multiple-furrow plough has been of such a massive, clumsy 

 make that there was no comfort in handling it — more especially 

 in a district of small fields — and the other reason is that the 

 ordinary ploughman does not want it to succeed. An imple- 

 ment or a system which is going to do the work with, say, 

 half the usual number of men and horses, is not going to be 

 hailed with pleasure by the ordinary working man — who fears 

 he may lose his job — and, consequently, the innovation will not 

 succeed unless it is tackled by the farmer himself or someone 

 interested in its success. The rural population has so long been 

 accustomed to one man attending to two horses and working 

 with them that it will take some work to get that man to look 

 after three ; but it has been done. Some farmers have written in 

 the agricultural press that they have induced their men to adopt 

 the system by a small rise in their wages, and it is only a matter 

 of keeping the thing going for a little while to make it a custom 

 and habit. The adoption of a duplex plough with one man and, 

 say, three horses to work it, is certainly a modern development 



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