The operation of plowing can only be briefly referred to. Wherever the soil has been efficiently drained, the ridges can be made wider and plowed on the flat, high ridges being no longer necessary for carrying off the water. There are advantages in plowing the land in uniform ridges of 18 ft. wide, or with an open fm-row not more than ft. apart, made as flat as possible. But the effects of cultivation by steam show that the fewer the open furrows the better, particularly when the land is intended for at grain crop which is to be sown by drill or broadcast with machinery, and when the crop is to be cut with a reaping-machine, as is now almost universally the case. It is curious to notice how one improvement in farm practice leads on to another. The most com mon mode of plowing with horses is now simply by casting the soil two ridges in and the next two out, beginning always with the two ridges where last time was left the open furrow.
The term fearing is applied to the commencement of a wide ridge. The process of feering differs according to the state of the land to be turned over. If there exists an old furrow or hollow, as is generally the case in len, two shallow furrows are turned, the one against the other, and so on; along each side of this commencement the plow moves. adding furrow after furrow. and increasing in depth until the third or fourth round is reached. This constitutes what is technically called the gathering system. In newly cleaned land, or where a hollow does not appear to turn the first furrows into, two fur rows are thrown out and then turned lightly in. The most common system, however, is what is known as casting or clearing. That is, after one feering is accomplished, another is made at the other side of the ridge, and furrow after furrow is turned towards the inside of each of these feerings until the whole ridge is plowed, and then in the center is formed the finish or mids—a furrow or trench into which the feering is turned the next time the land is plowed.
The plow is one of the most ancient of implements, and is mentioned in the 01(1 Testament at. a very early period. iron shares being also incidentally noticed more than seven centuries me. The ancient Egyptian plow was wholly of wood, and in some instances consisted of little more than a pointed stick. which was forced into the as it was drawn forward. In fact, the earliest plows were neither more nor less than varieties of the hoe (q.v.), worked by pressing the point into the ground instead of by percussion. The earliest form of the Greek plow, the autoguon, is an example of this; it was merely the trunk of a small tree, which had two branches opposite to each other, one branch forming the share and the other the handle, while the trunk formed the pole or beam. The more improved form, the pekton, in use among the Greeks, was not sub stantially different from the modern form in use in Mysia. The ancient Egyptian plow in one of its early stages, like the two forms above described, is devoid of all apparatus enabling the laborer to guide it. all that he can do being to press (by his weight applied
to the handle) dm share into the earth. The Egyptians, however, gradually improved the form, till it assumed the appearance of a hollow wedge formed by the two handles joined at the bottom, and with the beam fastened between the handles a little above their point of junction. The Romans, an essentially practical nation, largely improved on the plow, adding to it the coulter and mold-board, and occasionally attaching wheels to the beam to prevent the share from going too deep into the earth. The plow was almost unknown among the American aborigines, though Prescott describes a mode of plowing practiced among the Peruvians, which consisted in the dragging forward of a sharp-pointed stake by six or eight men, its sharp point, which was in front, being kept down in the ground by the pressure of the foot of another man who directed it. Britain and America, and their colonies are the only countries in which the plow has been brought to a state worthy of being considered effective, and even in Britain the most important amendments on it are not two centuries old. England took the lead in improvement by rendering the form more neat and effective, and by attaching wheels to aid in keeping the plow in a proper upright position. In Scotland, for some time after this, the plow was extremely rude and cumbrous, and usually drawn by 8 oxen, and some wooden plows are in use yet in the highlands of Scotland. In the middle of the 18th c., some Dutch plows were imported, and being found more effective, an impetus was thus given to attempts at improvement. James Small, who may justly be regarded as the real inventor of the Scotch or swing-plow, made great and important changes in the form and efficiency of the coulter, share, and mold-board. producing an implement at once lighter and vastly more efficient. All the swing-plows of successive makers are founded upon the basis of Small's plow. Wilkie of Uddingston (Lanarkshire) formed it wholly of iron, and his modification has been universally adopted in the mod ern plows. Among the various improvers of this form of cultivator may be mentioned, besides Wilkie of Uddinmston, Gray of the same place, Clarke of Stirling, Cunningham, Bnrrowman, Ponton, Sellars, Huntly (who have sent many of the swing-plows, for which their firm has long been famous, to Australia). In England, the improvers have chiefly been Ransomes of Ipswich (the patentee in 1785 of the cast-iron share), Howard of Bedford, Hornsby of Grantham (Lincolnshire), and Busby of Bedale, the last of whom gained a medal for his mold-boards at the great exhibition of 1851. For further infor mation concerning the plow and the mode of using it, see Morton's Cycloyedia of Agri calture (1856). Stephens's Book of the Farm, Book of Farmimplements, by Henry Stephens and R. Scott Burn, and other works.