Description:
<jats:p>The earlier efforts of mankind to assure an abundance of food consisted largely in the performance of magical ceremonies, frequently orgiastic in character. It is sometimes forgotten that such methods, even after regular cultivation had come into being, long continued to survive in close association with what we should consider more rational procedures. Yet this is a fact which we need to keep steadily in mind while we try to work out the early history of the traction-plough, which here refers to ploughs drawn by animals, especially those of the ox-kind,</jats:p>