and consequent wealth, while the lack of it--if the climate
be really dry, as in the Pacific States of America--means loss and
dearth. But the presence of a source of power which can easily be
shifted about from place to place on the farm for the purpose of
watering the ground must very soon suggest the applicability of the
same mechanical energy to the digging or ploughing of the soil.

It is from this direction, rather than from the wide introduction of
steam-ploughs and diggers, that the first great impetus to the
employment of mechanical power on the farm may be looked for. The
steam-plough, no doubt, has before it a future full of usefulness; and
yet the slow progress that has been made by it during a quarter of a
century suggests that, in its present form--that is to say while built
on lines imitating the locomotive and the traction-engine--it cannot
very successfully challenge the plough drawn by horse-power. More
probable is it--as has already been indicated--that the analogy of the
rock-drill in mining work will be followed. The farmer will use an
implement much smaller and handier than a movable steam-engine, but
supplied with power from a central station, either on his own land or
in some place maintained by co-operative or public agency. Just as the
miner pounds away at the rock by means of compressed air or
electricity, brought to his hands through a pipe or a wire, so the
farmer will work his land by spades or ploughs by the same kind of
mechanical power. The advantages of electrical transmission of energy
will greatly favour this kind of installation on the farm, as compared
with any other method of distribution which is as yet in sight.

For the ploughing of a field by the electric plough a cable will be
required capable of being stretched along one side of the area to be
worked. On this will run loosely a link or wheel connected with
another wire wound upon a drum carried on the plough and paid out as
the latter proceeds across the field. For different grades of land, of
course, different modes of working are advisable, the ordinary plough
of a multifurrow pattern, with stump-jumping springs or weights, being
used for land which is not too heavy or clayey; a disc plough or
harrow being applicable to light, well-worked ground; and the
mechanical spade or fork-digger--reciprocating in its motion very much
like the rock-drill--having its special sphere of usefulness in wet
and heavy land. In any case a wi