PLOUGHS.
Ploughs are instruments used to perform more rapidly what may be effected by the spade, namely, the cutting-up and turning-over the surface of the ground so as to destroy all grass and weeds growing in it, loosen, so as to expose it to the influence of the air, and render it fit to receive the seed.
The plough has been in use from the very earliest ages, and has been but little altered for many centuries; it is drawn by horses attached to the chain A at the end of the “beam,” and guided by a man holding the “stilts” or handles B B, the coulter, C, cuts a perpendicular slice in the ground, and the “share” or “slade,” D, following, cuts horizontally, so as to separate a long piece of earth which the breast or mould-board E, placed obliquely, turns over on one side; the plough returning at regular distances, successive cuttings are thus laid side by side, forming narrow ridges;F is an additional coulter called the “skim-coulter,” for removing the surface of the earth, and is only occasionally used.
There are a great many kinds of ploughs, each suitable to the kind of soil to be ploughed, whether light and dry or heavy and moist.