Agricultural Machinery. 
0 T HIN G is more worthy the attention of 
agriculturists than the improvement of the im¬ 
plements and machinery of the farm. A tool 
that is often used should be of the very best 
construction, even at an additional cost. It is quite a 
consideration to a laborer who does fifty days’ work at 
hoeing in a season, if by the use of a perfect tool, cost¬ 
ing fifty cents more, he can do this work as easily in 
forty days, and save ten days of labor. The farmer 
who throws aside his four-dollar plow, and by purchas¬ 
ing one at eight dollars is enabled to save for his team 
in five years, one-fourth of a hundred days’ plowing each, 
or one hundred and twenty-five days in all, makes 
an investment with his extra four dollars far exceeding 
that in any bank, railway, or gold-digging company. 
If the thing were possible, a most interesting and 
novel exhibition might be made at a State Fair,—more 
convincing than anything else could be, of the great 
progress of modem agriculture,—by presenting a col¬ 
lection of all the implements, such as were used in this 
state in the year 1800, alongside the numerous and 
finished machines of 1853. All the premium cast plows, 
with their gracefully curved and polished moldboards— 
the subsoilers, the deep tillers, and cast-steel plated im¬ 
plements, would be represented by the old square-faced 
“bull plow;” the threshing machines, in all their modi¬ 
fications, by the swing-flail; the most improved fanning 
mills and separators, by the wheat-riddle; wheat drills, 
gang plows, and wheel cultivators, by a shouldered 
bag of grain, and a forked harrow; revolving horse 
rakes, mowing and reaping machines, by the hand 
rake, scythe and sickle, &c. The implements of 1800 
would not load a horse-cart; those of 1853, with their 
various forms, would freight a steamboat or long train 
of rail-cars. The State Agricultural Museum should, 
if possible, preserve specimens of these relics of fifty 
years ago. 
And yet, in many particulars, the improvement of 
farm implements is yet in its infancy. The most finished 
cast-steel plow of the present day, perfect as it may 
seem, consumes five-sixths of the moving force to over¬ 
come friction and cohesion. For, in ordinary work, a 
horse will do the same as lifting 700 lbs. seven inches 
high per second; while a good tw®-horse plow, in turn¬ 
ing the soil, lifts only about 200 lbs. of the earth seven 
inches high on an average, per second. Here is an op¬ 
portunity for inventors to exercise their ingenuity, in 
overcoming this 500 per cent, of cohesion and friction. 
The English agriculturists have been lately much oc¬ 
cupied in endeavoring to devise some other way of 
loosening and pulverizing the soil, besides plowing. 
They have not yet been very successful, although some 
of their newly introduced machines, in connection with 
the plow, have accomplished wonders. The two most 
efficient of these are perhaps Croskill’s Clod-crusher and 
the Norwegian Harrow, both of which we described 
some months ago, and which might be introduced into 
our clayey districts with great probable advantage. A 
recent number of the English Agricultural Gazette de¬ 
scribed a new digging machine , which has lately been 
tried with some success. It is rather a forking than a 
digging machine, acting by prongs, not by cutting flat 
surfaces and edges. Drawn by six horses, it pulverized 
the soil of a field, consisting of a friable loam plowed 
the previous autumn, so that in walking over it the feet 
sank three inches, and a stick could be thrust down eight 
or nine inches. Every circle of its twelve teeth, re¬ 
volved on a separate rowel, of which there were seven, 
six inches apart, strung upon one axle. The rowels 
consisted of heavy cylindric blocks of iron, one foot in 
diameter, and four or five inches wide, from whose sur¬ 
faces project teeth ten or twelve inches long, curved in 
such a manner as to enter the earth perpendicularly as 
the machine revolves. Between the blocks are heavy 
washers, which keep them asunder, and facilitate the 
motion and cleansing of the whole. Such a machine as 
this may in some cases pulverize the earth more per¬ 
fectly than the plow and harrow, but otherwise appears 
to possess no advantage on the score of economy or ex¬ 
pedition ; for the six horses required to draw it, pulver¬ 
ize a strip only three and a half feet wide, and get over 
only about four acres a day; an amount easily plowed 
and harrowed by the teams separately. Still, however, 
it is not altogether impossible that such a machine may 
be the germ of something fitted to a single two-horse 
team, and working the earth more economically or 
more efficiently than the common plow. In this re¬ 
spect an important step may have been taken. 
More recently, we observe a notice of a new subsoil 
plow, lately invented in the north of England, which 
