mould-board for its reception; and if any other tightening or bracing should be requisite, a wooden wedge, well driven in, will bind every part effectually, and all this is accomplished without the assistance or instrumentality of screws.

“The said inventor and petitioner wishes it to be understood, that the principal metallic material of his Plough is cast iron. He has very little use for wrought iron, and by adapting the former to the extent he has done, and by discontinuing the latter, he is enabled to make the Plough stronger and better, as well as more lasting and cheap.

“He also claims, and hereby asserts the right, of varying the dimensions and proportions of his Plough, and of its several sections and parts, in the relations of somewhat more and somewhat less of length, breadth, thickness, and composition, according to his judgment or fancy, so that all the while he adheres to his principle and departs not from it.

“Regarding each and every of the matters submitted as very conducive to the reputation and emolument of the said Jethro Wood, he relies confidently upon a benign and favorable construction of his petition and specification, by the constituted authorities of his country.

“Given under his hand, at the city of New York, this fourteenth day of August, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen (1819), in the presence of two witnesses, to wit:

This patent expired by its own limitation in fourteen years, when it was renewed or continued for another term of fourteen years. In view of the comparative ease and speediness with which the inventors of the present day, or their assigns, utilize really valuable patents, it would be inferred, in the absence of specific knowledge to the contrary, that twenty-eight years constituted a sufficiently long period for the enjoyment by Mr. Wood, of “the full and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used,” the plow which he had invented. No doubt some members of Congress in refusing to continue the patent for a third term, acted from conscientious motives. But in point of fact, the period was occupied in a series of struggles calamitous to the inventor, to the history of which we must now turn. These struggles were unlike those in the lives of some other great inventors, notably, Goodyear and Howe. It was not a warfare for existence, the wolf of poverty staring him in the face. The broad fields which he had inherited from his father were adequate immunity from the sad fate too frequently allotted to inventors. But no benefactor of mankind in the domain of mechanism ever experienced more iniquitous treatment than Jethro Wood did.

Before the year 1819 closed, his mission as an inventor was an accomplished fact. The popular name given his implement, “The Cast Iron Plow,” from its entire abandonment of wrought iron in its construction, needed no change to be the noblest gift ever made to agriculture. In the ideal, hope had ripened into full fruition. And now, at this day, looking at the matter in the light of the past, seeing the absolutely incalculable benefits of the invention, it seems almost incredible that the American people, then even more than now, a nation of farmers, should not have hailed the new plow as an unspeakable boon, especially the community in which he dwelt, for Cayuga county then, as now, under a high state of cultivation, was and is peopled by a population of much more than average intelligence. But an inventor, like “a prophet, is not without honor save in his own country.” His neighbors gravely shook their heads at “Jethro’s folly.” With almost entire unanimity they agreed that the new contrivance would never work. His trials and difficulties at this stage of progress are told as follows, by one who wrote largely from personal recollection:

“He immediately began to manufacture his plows, and introduce them to the farmers in his neighborhood. The difficulties which he now encountered would have daunted any man without extraordinary perseverance and a firm belief in the inestimable benefit to agriculture sure to result from his invention. He was obliged to manufacture all the patterns, and to have the plow cast under the disadvantages usual with new machinery. The nearest furnace was thirty miles from his home, and, baffled by obstacles which unskillful and disobliging workmen threw in his way, he visited it, day after day, directing the making of his patterns, standing by the furnaces while the metal was melting, and often with his own hands aiding in the casting.

“When, at length, samples of his plow were ready for use, he met with another difficulty in the unwillingness of the farmers to accept them. ‘What,’ they cried, in contempt, ‘a plow made of pot metal? You might as well attempt to turn up the earth with a glass plowshare. It would hardly be more brittle.’

“One day he induced one of the most skeptical neighbors to make a public trial of the plow. A large concourse gathered to see how it would work. The field selected for the test was thickly strewn with stones, many of them firmly imbedded in the soil, and jutting up from the surface. All predicted that the plow would break at the outset. To their astonishment and Wood’s satisfaction, it went around the field, running easily and smoothly, and turning up the most perfect furrow which had ever been seen. The small stones against which the farmer maliciously guided it, to test the ‘brittle’ metal, moved out of the way as if they were grains of sand, and it slid around the immovable rocks as if they were icebergs. Incensed at the non-fulfillment of his prophecy, the farmer finally drove the plow with all force upon a large bowlder, and found to his amazement that it was uninjured by the collision. It proved a day of triumph for Jethro Wood, and from that time he heard few taunts about the pot-metal.

“It was soon discovered that his plow turned up the soil with so much ease that two horses could do the work for which a yoke of oxen and a span of horses had sometimes been insufficient before; that it made a better furrow, and that it could be bought for seven or eight dollars; no more running to the blacksmith, either, to have it sharpened. It was proved a thorough and valuable success. Thomas Jefferson, from his retirement at Monticello, wrote Wood a letter of congratulation, and although his theory of the construction of mould-boards had differed entirely from the inventor’s, gave his most hearty appreciation to the merits of the new plow.”

In this connection may be told a curious episode, one in itself worthy of record, and strikingly illustrative of the perversities of fortune to Mr. Wood in those gloomy days. It is the story of a Czar and a Citizen.

All uncertainty as to the feasibility of the new plow having been removed, and actuated by that broad philanthropy which was one of the peculiar charms in the character of Mr. Wood, he desired to extend as widely as possible the area of his usefulness, and concluded to make the Czar of Russia, so long the chief grain exporting country of the world, the present of one of his plows. During the Revolutionary war, then fresh in the American mind, that great sovereign, Catherine of Russia, had been the staunch friend of this country, and that, too, without being impelled by jealousy of Great Britain. It seems to be a