THE ATLANTIC SILVER PLOUGH

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29269, 29 July 1960, Page 19

THE ATLANTIC SILVER PLOUGH

QN May 3, 1820, at Keri Keri in v the Bay of Islands the first plough to turn New Zealand soil was used. On that historic day the missionary, the Hev. J. G. Butler, wrote in his diary; “I trust that this auspicious day will be remembered with gratitude and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn.” He had that day walked behind the team of six bullocks drawing the first plough. The Atlantic Silver Plough, the handsome trophy for to-morrow’s national ploughing championship, is an exact replica of the plough that Mr Butler used. The old

plough is preserved in the Old Colonists* Museum in Auckland. A facsimile of the page from Mr Butler’s diary is mounted on the kauri plinth which supports the silver model of the first plough. The sponsors of the national contest were able to locate the plough and diary entry with the help of the Turnbull Library. Photographs were despatched to the Sheffield silversmiths, Walker and Hall, Ltd., and their craftsmen produced the model in oxidised silver. ,/

The wooden plinth on which the model is mounted has a strong association with early New Zea-

land. Cut from a kauri pillar from the 80-year-old building of J. B. McEwen in Wellington it probably came from the great kauri forests of the north that Mr Butler knew and are no more today.

Mr E. Mervyn Taylor, wood engraver and an authority on Maori art and legend, engraved the plates and carved the frieze at the base which incorporates the agricultural tools of the Maori —the ko and the pinaid. The trophy for the world ploughing championship, the Esso Golden Plough, is a scale model of an 18th century Norfolk plough in the collection of agricultural instruments housed in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London. The inscription on the trophy is “Pax Arva Colat"—“Let peace cultivate the fields.**