588 



Report to H.R.H. the President 



had become our principal arable land. Not only, however, did 

 these obsolete monuments survive — it was also discovered by 

 Mr. Handley that the inventors of new ploughs, by rejecting the 

 wheels as well as the gallows, had produced, especially in the 

 north, a plough which, though fashionable under the name of 

 swing plough, had little advantage in draught over the ancient 

 one. It was Messrs. Ransome who furnished the modern English 

 plough with two low wheels, and with mould-boards adapted to 

 different soils. Messrs. Howard further improved the mould- 

 board. The mould-board, indeed, which, raising each slice of earth 

 (furrow slice) from its flat position gradually through an upright 

 one, lays it over half inclined on the preceding slice, is the essen- 

 tial acting part of the plough. It should perform this spiral transfer 



Howard's Patent Iron Plough. 



of a very rough material with an equal pressure both crossways 

 and lengthways. The true shape is founded on mathematical 

 laws, but as, in a somewhat similar case of displacement, that of 

 water by the bow of a yacht, is doubtless best determined by 

 actual trial. The test of perfection in the work of a plough is 

 that the furrow-slice shall lie, after being turned over, in a 

 perfectly straight line, not only unbroken but even uncracked. It 

 is by patient attention to this point that Mr. Busby, with the aid of 

 an excellent farmer, Mr. Outhwaite, produced the beautiful miould- 

 boards of his prize ploughs. This unbroken furrow-slice requires 

 some length of mould-board; and it is urged on the other hand, 

 in behalf of short mould-boards, that they pulverise the soil while 

 they turn it over. Practical farmers, however, know that to 

 pulverise is not the immediate object of ploughing land ; but as 

 the length of the English mould-boards surprised foreigners, 

 it may not be useless to state a further reason for that ap- 

 parently excessive length. Ours also were, in fact, made short 

 and hollow for our new ploughs, until at one of the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Society's trials ail the selected ploughs were brought to 

 a stand in attempting to work a strong clay. The cause of the 

 failure was this : The chief resistance to the horses in ploughing 

 proceeds not from the weight of earth moved, which is insigni- 



