TRANSACTIONS. ON VIRGIL'S PLOUGH, AS ILLUSTRATED BY A RUDE IMPLEMENT IN MODERN USE IN SPAIN. By John Fitchett Marsh. [The following is the substance of some viva voce observations, made in exhibiting the Plough at a meeting of the Society, on the 4th December, 1862, when Mr. Marsh was requested to put them into the form of a paper.] The curiously rude plough here exhibited, and which forms Fig. 1 in our page of illustrations, was seen by Colonel Wilson-Patten in actual use in the South of Spain, while he was in command of the 3rd Regiment of Lancashire Militia, in garrison at Gibraltar, during the Crimean War. It was one of fifteen ploughs of similar construction at work on one of the largest farms in the district. Rightly regarding it as a curiosity-knowing that words would fail to give his friends at home an adequate idea of the rudeness of the implements in use by Spanish farmers—and probably desirous of pointing a moral as to the means by which England has attained her present agricultural position, he purchased the plough, and had his prize conveyed on horseback to the fortress of Gibraltar. He exhibited it at the Annual Meeting of the Manchester and Liverpool Agricultural Society, held at Warrington in 1857, " jocularly asserting his claim to the prize (if there had been one) for the worst agricultural implement there exhibited; and afterwards presented it to the Warrington Museum and Library, whence it is brought for the inspection of the Historic Society on the present occasion. The mode of use is apparent from examination of the plough. The pole is suspended by straps from a hole in the centre of the heavy yoke, borne by two oxen. The yoke presses against a wooden pin (marked i on our sketch), which, being placed in one or other of four mortice-shaped holes in the pole, practically lengthens or shortens it, so as to increase or diminish the angle made with the ground by the share, and the consequent depth of the furrow. The pole forms a continuation of what we may describe, for want of a technical term for any corresponding part in the modern English implement, as the Trunk or Body of the plough, and is firmly spliced to it with two stout hoops of iron, tightened with wedges. Two holes in the yoke probably serve for the passage through it of a cord to be used as reins. When I first saw the implement in the Agricultural show yard, it occurred to me that a more careful study of it might throw light on the description of a Roman plough, contained in the well known passage in Virgil's Georgics. Its appearance indicates that it has undergone little improvement since the time of Virgil; and of all the nations of Europe, probably none has retained in so great a degree as Spain the manners, dress, language, and implements of ancient Rome; of which I will not stop to point out examples.* My conjecture was more than realized by subsequent examination. * An illustration appropriate to our subject is mentioned by Colonel WilsonPatten, who, at the same farm where the plough was purchased, saw the process of threshing corn by trampling it under horses' hoofs. The treading out of the corn by oxen is a process of which we have very early record. The use of horses for the purpose is not so familiar; but it is alluded to by Virgil, who, in mentioning the practice of reducing the condition of mares intended for breeding, (Geor. iii., 132), says:— The subject was not new to me; for the passage had been impressed on my memory by the fact that it was given me at school as an exercise, in which I was required to furnish from it an intelligible account of the construction and details of Virgil's Plough. Whether my respected master really expected me to make anything of it—whether it was a practical joke or whether (as I have since thought probable) it was a bona fide experiment to ascertain how far Virgil's description was calculated to convey any definite ideas to a mind of, I think I may say, fair schoolboy intelligence, I never knew. The result was a hopeless failure. But better late than never; and now, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, I present before another audience, as critical-and less formidable only because I am better prepared to meet it—my long delayed exercise on VIRGIL'S PLOUGH. The 66 passage commences at 1. 169 of the 1st Georgic:- "In BURIM, et curvi formam accipit ulmus aratri : "STIVE, quæ cursus a tergo torqueat imo." I have adopted some emendations in the last line, for reasons which I will shortly notice; but let me first give a translation, as literal as may be, and leaving the technical terms untranslated for the present, so as not to prejudge the questions as to their respective meanings. The passage will then read thus: "From the first, while in the woods, an elm, bent with 'Sæpe etiam cursu quatiunt, et sole fatigant, "Cum graviter tunsis gemit area frugibus, et cum Pliny also (xviii., 30), says :-" Messis ipsa alibi tribulis in areâ, alibi equarum "gressibus exteritur, alibi perticis flagellatur;" and Columella (ii., 21), says :"Si competit ut areà teratur frumentum, nihil dubium est quin equis melius 66 quam bubus ea res conficiatur." |