IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC PLOUGHING MATCHES.

Southland Times, Issue 1169, 2 June 1869, Page 3

IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC PLOUGHING MATCHES.

In every country, at least in modern times, where patriots have associated for the purpose of improving the agriculture of their country, public ploughing matches have been instituted, as the principal and most obvious means of furthering the great object in view. The soil must be turned up to prepare it for the seed ; consequently, to acquire a facility in performing that foundamental aud most important operation well must be a desideratum. Let old, obstinate, and undiscerning prejudice tell how can the object in question be so effectually accomplished as by public trials of skill. When conducted with judgment they encourage the workmen to acquire the habit of plouging straight, of forming their furrows of equal and proper breadth and depth, and of performing the business with steadiness and expedition. The marked attention of the public to these matters has a good effect in stimulating manufacturers to make better implements, and farmers to have better teams. There is not a district in Ireland wherein these results would not 'prove advantageous. In. every locality where ploughing matches have been instituted, the most rapid improvements have invariably followed as their legitimate offspring. At our late anniversary meeting considerable misunderstanding seemed to exist on the subject of ploughing by standard measure. For the future information and guidance of ploughmakers, ploughmen, and judges of ploughing, it should be publicly known that our standard measure of Bin. broad by sin. deep implies a rectangular areas, the lean or inclination of the furrow being somewhat under 45 o . A section of the furrow showing acute angles, generally accompanied by a highfeathered ploughshare and inclined coulter, is what has long been known, condemned, and exploded, in England and Scotland, as false cutting. Experienced judges are now in the habit of throwing out a portion of the T!«ork with a spade ; true cutting can thus be publicly tested, and that which is false exposed. The former exhibits a level stratum beneath ' | the furrows, whilst the latter appears unI equal and actually ribbed. This sham work iis no longer a secret in Ireland* At ' a

local ploughing match held last year~ in this couutry, more than one half of the work was, on the above grounds, disqualified from entering into competition. — Annual Report and Proceedings of Tirkeeran Farming Society, 1868.