duced by a single blow.

There are no machine lines--no lines filed out in iron or cut by the
lathe to the draughtsman's design, drawn with straight-edge and ruler on
paper. The thing has been put together bit by bit: how many thousand,
thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows before the idea
arose, and the curve to be given to this or that part grew upon the mind
as the branch grows on the tree! There is not a sharp edge or sharp
corner in it; it is all bevelled and smoothed and fluted as if it had
been patiently carved with a knife, so that, touch it where you will, it
handles pleasantly.

In these curved lines and smoothness, in this perfect adaptability of
means to end, there is the spirit of art showing itself, not with colour
or crayon, but working in tangible material substance. The makers of
this plough--not the designer--the various makers, who gradually put it
together, had many things to consider. The fields where it had to work
were, for the most part, on a slope, often thickly strewn with stones
which jar and fracture iron.

The soil was thin, scarce enough on the upper part to turn a furrow,
deepening to nine inches or so at the bottom. So quickly does the rain
sink in, and so quickly does it dry, that the teams work in almost every
weather, while those in the vale are enforced to idleness. Drain furrows
were not needed, nor was it desirable that the ground should be thrown
up in "lands," rising in the centre. Oxen were the draught animals,
patient enough, but certainly not nimble. The share had to be set for
various depths of soil.

All these are met by the wheel plough, and in addition it fulfils the
indefinite and indefinable condition of handiness. A machine may be
apparently perfect, a boat may seem on paper, and examined on
principles, the precise build, and yet when the one is set to work and
the other floated they may fail. But the wheel plough, having grown up,
as it were, out of the soil, fulfils the condition of handiness.

This handiness, in fact, embraces a number of minor conditions which can
scarcely be reduced to writing, but which constantly occur in practice,
and by which the component parts of the plough were doubtless
unconsciously suggested to the makers. Each has its proper name. The
framework, on wheels in front--the distinctive characteristic of the
plough--is called collectively "tacks," and the shafts of the plough
rest on it loosely, so that they swing or work alm