64 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



trimmings. If the hexagonal frame be supposed cut or divided into six com- 

 ponent planks, one of these planks laid down beneath each carriage-wheel, 

 and the carriage itself pushed forward, there would be supplied for it a short 

 railway, having a length equal to the length of each plank ; and the carnage, 

 having run on to the extremity of the rail-planks, might easily be transferred 

 to another pair, if they could be placed in due opposition with the last. In 

 this manner, by means of two sets of alternating planks, the carriage might 

 be made to run to any required distance. Now, this is just that which is ac- 

 complished by the rotation of the wheels themselves in the carriage under 

 consideration ; only, instead of the alternation of two pair of planks merely, 

 the changes are played on no less than six pair, one pan* alone being in plane 

 contact with the underlying ground at one time." 



At the exhibition this machine ran itself from the show-yard, over some 

 difficult and steep road, to the trial-field, and there went through the opera- 

 tions of plowing, scarifying, and harrowing, with very fair success. Its per- 

 formances seemed to stagger some of the old sticklers for things as they are, 

 giving a pretty broad hint that steam was insensibly coming closer to the 

 farmer. 



Another steam-plow, invented by Messrs. Fisker, of England, was exhibited 

 on the same occasion, and is thus described in the London Agricultural 

 Gazette : 



" The whole apparatus is novel, and. we may say, uncommonly promising. 

 Instead of a heavy wire rope to drag the plow frame by main force, a light, 

 endless hemp rope, only three eighths of an inch thick, communicates power 

 to the plow carriage, which we may call locomotive, as it propels itself in the 

 following manner : a grooved wheel set in motion by proper spur-wheels from 

 the rigger actuated by the hemp rope, winds, as it were, along a strong 

 wire rope laid upon the ground ; and the frame, being thus carried slowly 

 forward, drags plows or other instruments after it. The hemp cord does not 

 touch the ground, but is held up at every forty yards' distance by a 'horse,' 

 or small friction pulley-frame, about three and a half feet high. This cord 

 travels at the rate of twenty miles per hour ; but the speed being reduced by 

 the wheel-work upon the plow carriage, the latter travels only two miles per 

 hour. When two plows are in work at once, having the draught of four 

 horses, the strain upon the rapidly-running cord will thus be less than half a 

 horse's draught. We were informed by the exhibitor that a four-horse engine 

 is sufficiently powerful to work two plows, and that with four hundred- weight 

 of coal it will plow four acres in a day, the expense for labor being only that 

 of two men and a boy. If this be strictly the fact, we have a complete in- 

 vention able to plow light land at a cost of say 3s. per acre. That is not far 

 from the truth we are sure, for we ourselves saw one plow drawn at the rate 

 of at least two miles per hour when the engine had only seven pounds' or 

 eight pounds' pressure upon the square inch, and this was an engine of six- 

 horse power at 40 pounds pressure. To be sure, the land had been previously 

 plowed, pulverized, subjected to the trial of all sorts of drills, and been after- 

 ward well trampled by hundreds of people, and consolidated with rain, so that 

 the possible quantity and quality of the work could not well be ascertained. 



