The Plough of the Future

Southland Times, Issue 12771, 2 December 1893, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Plough of the Future

(Napier Telegraph.)

No man can tell when the first plough was used, or when a certain kind of grass was first promoted into wheat. The simplest and most primitive discoveries are after all the greatest, at least when judged by their consequences. The plough is of infinitely more importance than the steam engine, and the' ‘invention’ of wheat has never known its equal. But the origin of civilisation—of the great fundamental arts, without which human life is savagery —is as much a mystery as the origin of life itself. Wonderful, too, ie the fact that these arts should have remained for so many long ages in their primitive state. Thb wOrld’bacl religions^and philosophies and epic poems, and paintings, and scalp-: tares (the lasttheldcspaif;of:all succeeding • times) thoniatidii of yeafs'before it had decent plough. Bo easily satisfied, so to; speak, were the material compared with the spiritual wants of mankind. The elowness 6f invention is humorously described byttie author ot ‘The Sofa,’ but there is something pathetic as well as almost incredible in the' fact that the old forms of what may bo called the chief agricultural, implement—the forms which were in use before Homer sang his tale of Troy—should have survived even in England to quite recent times, and should still be used in some European countries. This is all the more wonderful in it hat the commonest observation, as cue should think, would have been sufficient to show theoriginal tillers of the soilthat good ploughing would make a good harvest. It is said of some fortunate spots of the earth that you have Only to tickle the ground to produce a crop, but in all the seats of the earliest civilisation, except Egypt, the soil required tilling, and the plough was used even in Egypt. But century after century passed in the long procession of the ages, and yet it never seems to have occurred to any one of the countless millions who had been engaged in husbandry to improve the-mould-board of the traditional plough, and of course far less to invent a ‘aubsoiler’ or a ‘digger.’ This is certainly a very remarkable fact in the history of the race, and would almost lead to the belief that the inventive facultyitself was in anundeveloped state. Mr Gladstone, founding on the paucity of colors mentioned by the Greek writers, once broached the idea that the color sense was yet in its rudimentary stage —that the Greeks of the Homeric and later ages, in fact, were color blind. But this is too fanciful. Wo cannot donbt that they perceived ‘all the colors of the rainbow,’ and felt its beauty just as we do, though they bad not learned bow to analyse its prismatic hues. There is something, however, to be said in support of the comparatively late developoment of the faculty of invention,in the technical sense; it is at all events difficult to account for the long delay in improving some of the most indispensable implements (especially the plough) on any other supposition. On the other hand,races long extinct—that were extinct centuries before thedawnof history—unquestionably possessed some mechanical secrets unknown to the science of the present day. Be all thiH,howaver,as it may,it is not much more than one hundred years since the genius of modern invention began operations on the contrivances of ancient times. The Dutch were the first to improve the plough. The British people got their first instruction ia agriculture.(in modern times) from the Flemings, and it was the Dutch

ploughs which found their way into Eng. land and Scotland that gave the first im. pulse to the improvement of our agricultural implements. The old traditional forms, some of them still almost primitive, began to go out of fashion, so to speak, in the early part of last century. Small’s swing plough, the first which was constructed on scientific principles, marked a great advance, and is still the model after which most swing ploughs are made. In England wheel ploughs were more in favor, and there can be no donbt that wheels are a great advantage, and that tho Scotch were for long years the victims of pure prejudice. They thought, besides, that because the swing plough required more skill in the ploughman the character of farm servants would be deteriorated by the use of wheels; and to Ibis day the various modifications of Small’s plough are still in nse in most parts of Scotland. The double-furrow plough, with which so much of the virgin | soil of New Zealand has been broken up, has never been a success either in England or Scotland, and is, we believe, now prac tioally abandoned. But a new era in ploughing is apparently about to begin. The digger plough is the plough of the future. So, at least, say many of our agricultural authorities. It has thus taken i about a hundred and fifty years even of j modern invention to produce the right kind | of plough for making a bed for the seed, i If the digger plough comas into nse the ‘furrow,’ in which ploughmen take such delight, will disappear, and ploughing matches will be a thing of the past; the matches at least would bo for the ploughs, not the ploughmen. But that would be a matter of small consequence. The digger plough, of which we cannot give a technical description here, so thoroughly opens and pulverises the ground that with a furrow eight inches deep it makes a twelve-inch seed bed. The draught, too, is moch lighter ; the broad share cuts the bottom of the furrow as completely as the coulter cuts the side, and as the soil is loosened before it meets the short mouldboard there is comparatively little friction, there being besides none of the pressure caused by the old ‘packing’ process. The plough, in a word, does even for stiff ground what the spade does for a light friable soil, and as there is a serrated plate fastened to tho back of the breast for levelling tho broken furrow, the surface is at once ready,for the seed. Much labour—labour both ia ploughing and harrowing —is thus saved, and the ground at the ' same time tilled in a far more effectual manner. The digging plough is to all appearance to bo the plough of the future.