I 
140 COUNIT AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 
riculture the chief processes were still confined to human hands. 
It is true a gradual improvement took place in the models of 
agricultural implements, and the material of which they were 
constructed ; but these changes were forced upon community 
by the advancement of the mechanic arts generally, rather than 
produced by a bold and initiatory step in the agricultural de¬ 
partment itself. 
The best hand now employed upon a farm is not the man who 
can cut the neatest swath, or thrash out the most grain with a 
flail. Farm machinery is working a wonderful revolution in ag¬ 
ricultural processes, and is doing much of the work better and 
much more rapidly than it was executed by the old, hand pro¬ 
cess. We well remember a farmer in the old country who pri¬ 
ded himself upon the splendid manner in which he broad-cast 
seed wheat, and he would point to the grain field in the fall, 
when the grain was up, proudly contrasting it with his neigh¬ 
bor’s unevenly sown ground. But at length that neighbor 
purchased a grain drill, and the comparison thenceforth was 
decidedly in his favor. The old farmer could never speak com¬ 
placently of a grain drill, declaring it would ruin all skill in 
sowing, and enable a mere clod-hopper to scatter seed equal to 
the best wheat sower in the world. 
Who could think, at the present day, of falling back upon 
the flail to do the threshing of our grain ? The gang-plow, the 
wheel-cultivator, the horse-rake, the corn-sheller, &c., &c., 
and above all the mower and reaper are additional illustrations 
of the revolution that is going on in the agricultural depart¬ 
ments of human industry, brought about by the direct appli¬ 
cation of scientific knowledge and inventive genius. Machin¬ 
ists are now co-operating with us to elevate agriculture to its 
proper place and importance; we have but to make known our 
wants to them, and soon the required implement is invented. 
Machinery should, more or less, be employed as fast as our 
surplus means will admit. The lively rattle of the reaper and 
mower was heard this season in innumerable fields that never 
before, in gathering the harvest, felt anything but the slow 
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