Part 5 (2/2)

The old plough used to be drawn with four horses; and they were needed.

It was a c.u.mbrous instrument, ”adapted to the clay soils when those soils were the chief source of corn to the country, and had been handed down from father to son, after the heavy lands had been widely laid down to grazing-ground, and the former downs had become our princ.i.p.al arable land.” The modern plough is an implement constructed on mathematical principles, which, by its mould-board, ”raising each slice of earth (furrow-slice) from its flat position, through an upright one, lays it over half inclined on the preceding slice.” The perfect instrument produces the skilled labourer. A good ploughman will set up a pole a quarter of a mile distant, and trace a furrow so true up to that goal that no eye can detect any divergence from absolute straightness. Mr.

Pusey justly says that this is a triumph of art.

With an agriculture that permits no waste, much of the picturesque has fled from our fields. Bloomfield describes the repose of the ploughman after he has driven his team to the boundary of his furrow:--

”Welcome green headland! firm beneath his feet; Welcome the friendly bank's refres.h.i.+ng seat; There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs.”

Gone is the green headland; gone the cowslip bank; gone the pendent boughs. The furrow runs up to the extremest point of a vast field without hedges. Gone, too, are the green slips between the lands of common fields. Their very names of ”balk” and ”feather” are obsolete.

These adornments of the landscape are inconsistent with the demands of a population that doubles itself in half a century. The labourer has small rest, and the soil has less. Under the old husbandry, before the culture of the green crops, one-third of the arable land was always idle. Two years of grain-crop, and one year of fallow, was the invariable rule.

Look how the land is worked now. The plough and the harrow turn up and pulverize the soil, but they do it much more effectually than of old.

The roller is a n.o.ble iron instrument, instead of an old pollard. Modern ingenuity has added the clod-crusher. But something was still wanting for the better preparation of land for seed--this is the scarifier or cultivator; which, according to Mr. Pusey, will save one half of the horse-labour employed upon the plough. Into the details of this saving it is no part of our purpose to enter.[19] We give a cut of the implement, covering as much ground in width as 8-1/2 ploughs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clod-crusher.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scarifier.]

We proceed to ”Instruments used in the Cultivation of Crops.” Mr. Pusey tells us that ”the sower with his seed-lip has almost vanished from southern England, driven out by a complicated machine, the drill, depositing the seed in rows, and drawn by several horses.” We miss the sower; and the next generation may require a commentary upon the many religious and moral images that arose out of his primitive occupation.

When James Montgomery says of the seed of knowledge, ”broadcast it o'er the land,” some may one day ask what ”broadcast” means. But the drill does not only sow the seed; it deposits artificial manures for the reception of the seed. The bones that were thrown upon the dunghill are now crushed. The mountains of fertilizing matter that have been acc.u.mulated through ages on islands of the Pacific, from the deposits of birds resting in their flight upon rocks of that ocean, and which we call guano, now form a great article of commerce. Superphosphate, prepared from bones, or from the animal remains of geological ages, is another of the precious dusts which the drill economizes. There are even drills for dropping water combined with superphosphate. ”Such,” says Mr.

Pusey, ”is the elastic yet accurate pliability with which, in agriculture, mechanism has seconded chemistry.” The system of horse-hoeing, which is the great principle of modern husbandry, entirely depends upon the use of the drill. The horse-hoe cannot be worked unless the plants are in rows. Such a hoe as this will clean at once nine rows of wheat, six of beans, and four of turnips. To manage such an instrument requires ”a steady and cool hand.” The skilled labourer is as essential as the beautiful machine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Horse-hoe.]

Of instruments for gathering the harvest, the most important are reaping-machines. In the United States they are sold to a great extent.

Mr. M'Cormick, who completed his invention in 1845, states that the demand reaches to a thousand annually. Mr. Pusey says of this machine that, ”in bad districts and late seasons, it may often enable the farmer to save the crop.” In Scotland and the north of England Mr. Bell's reaping-machine is coming into extensive use. The Americans have also their mowing-machines, drawn by two horses, which mow, upon an average, six acres of gra.s.s per day. The haymaking machines, as labour-saving instruments, are not uncommon in England.

Machines for preparing corn for market are amongst the most important inventions of modern times. Here, indeed, agriculture a.s.sumes many of the external features of a manufacture. Steam comes prominently into action. In many large farms there is fixed steam-power; and most efficient it is. But the moveable steam-engine comes to the aid of the small farmer; and in some districts that power is let out to those who want it. By this little engine applied to a thras.h.i.+ng-machine, corn is thrashed at once from the rick, instead of being carried into the barn.

Here is a representation of the combined steam-engine and thras.h.i.+ng-machine. The thras.h.i.+ng-machine with horse-power is that generally used in England. Rarely, now, can the beautiful description of Cowper be realized:--

”Thump after thump resounds the constant flail, That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Moveable steam-engine and thras.h.i.+ng-machine.]

Few now wield that ancient instrument. Nor is the chaff now separated from the corn by the action of the wind, which was called winnowing, but we have the winnowing-machine, by which forty quarters of wheat can be taken from the thras.h.i.+ng-machine and prepared for the market in five hours.

But machinery does not end here. The food of stock is prepared by machines. First, there is the turnip-cutter. Our 'Farmer's Boy' will tell us how his sheep and kine were fed in the winter fifty years ago:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Thras.h.i.+ng-machine with horse-power.]

”No tender ewe can break her nightly fast, Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast, Till Giles with ponderous beetle foremost go, And scattering splinters fly at every blow; When, pressing round him, eager for the prize, From their mix'd breath warm exhalations rise.”

We are told that ”lambs fed with a turnip-cutter would be worth more at the end of a winter by eight s.h.i.+llings a head than lambs fed on whole turnips.” The chaff-cutter is an instrument equally valuable.

The last machine which we shall mention is connected with the greatest of all improvements in the crop-producing power of British land--the system of tile-draining. Pipes are now made by machinery; and land may be effectually drained at a cost of 4_l._ per acre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Draining-tile machine.]

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