made of wrought, the share of cast iron,
case hardened; the coulter, or cutting-knife,
being of iron and steel. They are provided
with wheels. It requires three or four
ploughs of different construction to do the
work of a single farm thoroughly.

After the ground has been ploughed, it
requires to be broken into as fine a
condition as possible, to receive seed. For
this purpose, on the continent and in
Australia, a thick bush is often used, such as
Gervase Markham, writing in sixteen
hundred and eighty-eight, recommends in his
Farewell to Husbandry. "Get," saith he, "a
pretty big whitethorn tree, and make sure it
be wonderful thick, bushy, and rough grown."
The bushy tree was thrown aside for a
harrow of wooden spikes; which has since
been superseded by instruments of iron, such
as harrows and scufflers, or scarifiers, by which
the soil is cleaned, stirred, and broken up to a
due degree of fineness. Of these several
sorts of earth-torturers there were thirty-
five exhibitors at Lincoln. With such a
choice there is no difficulty in selecting
implements which, whatever the quality of the
soil, will pulverise the clods left by the plough,
clear away the weeds and roots, and cover
with earth the seeds sown over the surface.

Next in order come a set of machines
invented in consequence of the introduction
of such portable manures as guano,
nitrate of soda, soot, salt, superphosphate,
&c., which it may be advisable to distribute
broad-cast or in a liquid state. A few years
ago the farmer was entirely dependent on
farm-yard manure; which, still valuable, is
bulky, expensive to move, and even when dug
in, not sufficiently stimulating for certain crops.
It is advantageous, for instance, to force
forward turnips with great rapidity, in order to
place them beyond the ravages of the fly. To
this end chemistry is always at work to find
or to compound new manures. Bones were a
great discovery in their day; but now, fossil
bones of antediluvian beasts are, with
sulphuric acid, made useful for growing roots to
feed Christmas bullocks. Bones were the
earliest portable manure used for turnips,—
first nearly whole; then crushed; next, on
the suggestion of a great chemist, dissolved
in sulphuric acid; and now distributed over
the land in a water-drill. Portable manures
are expensive, and machine distribution is more
regular and economical than hand-casting.
At Lincoln, mechanical invention was found
keeping pace with chemical discoveries. Ten
sorts of machines were there for distributing
portable manures in a dry state, the last and
best being the invention of a young Norfolk
farmer, and constructed by a village blacksmith.

The ground manured, is ready for seed.
In certain cases both are put in at the
same time. The ancient sower—whose race
is not wholly extinct—fastened the seed
round his waist and shoulder with a sheet,
and dexterously cast the grain right and
left as he traversed the field; but, in
seventeen hundred and thirty-three Jethro
Tull, who nearly touched without actually
grasping, some of the greatest improvements
in agriculture, invented a corn and turnip-
drill and a horse-hoe for ridging up and
clearing weeds away; an operation only to
be done by hand-labour after broad-cast
sowing. But in this he was before his time.
Yet his contrivance has since been adopted
and improved upon sufficiently to yield
samples at Lincoln, from thirty exhibitors.
Among them were three liquid manure
or water drills, which were invented about
ten years ago, and pushed into notice within
three. These are now making rapid way
among the turnip sowers in light, level, dry
districts.

The horse-hoe naturally follows the drill,
whether to scuffle up weeds or to embank earth
along the sides of roots. Formerly the great
obstacle to the use of implements which
enable farm, work to be done by mechanism,
was a state of society and a system of poor-
laws which gave the farmer no choice between
paying poor-rates or wages for labourers he
was better without; but farmers in eighteen
hundred and fifty-four have no fear of surplus
labour or of overwhelming poor-rates;
consequently, specimens of twenty horse-hoes of
every degree of ingenuity were scrutinized at
Lincoln, and largely purchased. The latest
invention was a rotatory hoe, invented last year
by a Norfolk farmer, which thins out turnips
with marvellous swiftness and exactness; thus
promising to supersede the degrading hand
labour of the Norfolk gangs of boys and girls.

After crops are fairly sown, hoed, and
weeded, the next operation is gathering:
this brings us to carts and waggons; the
wheels of which are made by machinery, at
some of the large implement factories, at
the rate of thousands per annum. Twenty-
one horse carts were shown; and it is to be
hoped that by degrees the lumbering, ill-
balanced vehicles seen in too many English
and Irish counties will be superseded by the
light Scotch cart.

But before carting comes mowing, and
reaping, and haymaking. In grass-mowing
no machine has yet superseded the scythe.
But every year spreads more widely the
use of the haymaking machine, a revolving
cylinder with prongs, which, driven
by a horse, lightly tosses the grass, and
saves half the work of the haymaker.
Four such machines by different makers
were shown; the best were ordered in
greater number than the makers could
execute. This machine, like the horse-rake (of
which a dozen were displayed in the
Lincoln yard), is one of the simple implements
that every farmer short of his usual supply of
Irish labourers (now better employed in
tilling the backwoods of America) should