I suspect that the average farmer of our completely rural districts would be surprised, if not instructed, by a day's careful scrutiny of the contents of one of our great implement warehouses. So many and such various and ingenious devices for pulverizing the earth applying fertilizers to the soil, planting or sowing rapidly, eradicating weeds, economizing labor in harvesting, etc., will probably transcend not merely his experience, but his imagination; and every one of these myriad implements is useful in its place, though no single farmer can afford to buy all or half of them. It will yet, I think, be found necessary by the farmers of a school-district, if not of a township, to meet and agree among themselves that one will buy this implement, another that, and so on, until twenty or thirty such devices as a Stump or Rock-Puller, a Clod-Crusher, Thrashing-Machine, Fanning-Mill, etc., shall be owned in the neighborhood--each by a separate farmer, willing to live and let live--with an understanding that each shall be used in turn by him who needs it; and so every one shall be nearly as well accommodated as though he owned them all. For the number and variety of useful implements increase so rapidly, while their usefulness is so palpable, that, though it is difficult to farm efficiently without many if not most of them, it is impossible that the young farmer of moderate means should buy and keep them all. True, he might hire when he needed, if what he wanted were always at hand; but this can only be assured by some such arrangement as I have suggested, wherein each undertakes to provide and keep that which he will most need; agreeing to lend it whenever it can be spared to any other member of the combination, who undertakes to minister in like manner to _his_ need in return. I think few will doubt that the inventions in aid of Agriculture during the last forty years will be far surpassed by those of the forty years just before us. The magnificent fortunes which, it is currently understood, have rewarded the inventors of the more popular Mowers, Reapers, etc., of our day, are sure to stimulate alike the ingenuity and the avarice of clever men throughout the coming years, and to call into existence ten thousand patents, whereof a hundred will be valuable, and ten or twelve eminently useful. Plowing land free from stumps and stones cannot long be the tedious, patience-trying process we have known it. The machinery which will at once pulverize the soil to a depth of two feet, fertilize and seed it, not requiring it to be trampled by the hoofs of animals employed in subsoiling and harrowing, will soon be in general use, especially on the spacious, deep, inviting prairies of the Great West.--But I must defer what I have to say of Steam and its uses in Agriculture to another chapter. XLI. STEAM IN AGRICULTURE.