Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 16833 in 6 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
would perish, from inability to penetrate and divide.
The "Sterilis tellus medio versatur in aestu" of Virgil, shows the opinion he entertained of a husbandry that left the fields without vegetation.
The good effect of these mixtures was known to the ancients, from whom the practice has descended to us.
Of Practical Agriculture, and its necessary Instruments.
We begin this part of our subject with a few remarks on the instruments necessary to agriculture, which may be comprised under the well known names of the plough, the harrow, the roller, the threshing-machine, and the fanning mill.
It is among the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, that the arts most useful to man, have been of later discovery--of slower growth, and of less marked improvement, than those that aimed only at his destruction.--At a time, when the phalanx and the legions were invented and perfected, and when the instruments they employed were various and powerful, those of agriculture continued to be few, and simple, and inefficient.
This beau ideal, this suppositious excellence, in the mechanism of a plough, has been the object of great national, as well as individual research. In Great Britain, high prizes have been established for its attainment; and in France, under the ministry of Chaptal, 10,000 francs, or 00, were offered for this object, by the agricultural society of the Seine. In both countries, the subject has employed many able pens; those of Lord Kaimes, of Mr. Young, of Mr. Arbuthnot, of Lord Somerville, and of Messieurs Duhamel, Chateauvieux, Bosc, Guillaume, &c. It is not for us, therefore, to do more than assemble and present such rules for the construction of this instrument, as have most attained the authority of maxims.
The resistance made to the plough being produced less by the weight of the earth, than by the cohesion of its parts, it is evident, that the head should be shod with iron, and rendered as smooth as possible. This remark applies equally to the soc and to the mould board.
See Arbuthnot on Ploughs.
It is a general opinion, that a heavy plough is more disadvantageous than a light one; because the draft of the former, being greater, will be more fatiguing to the cattle: but the experiments of the agricultural society in London, establish a contrary doctrine, and show, that in light grounds, the labour is more easily and better performed, with a heavy, than with a light plough.
Its clod-breaking and pulverizing property is much increased, by surrounding the roller with narrow bands of iron, two inches broad, three inches thick, and six inches asunder; or by studding it with iron points, resembling harrow teeth, and projecting three or four inches.
Mr. Levi M'Keen, of Poughkeepsie.
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
