86 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



FAWKES'S STEAM PLOUGH. 



During the past year, a new and improved steam plough has been brought 

 before the public by John "\V. Fawkcs, of Lancaster Co., Penn., which is 

 claimed to be superior to any device of the kind heretofore invented. In 

 order to fully understand the merits of this invention, it is expedient to 

 review the results accomplished in this direction by the three principal English 

 inventors, viz., Fowler, Smith and Boydell. 



Fowler does his ploughing in this wise : To his engine is attached a drum 

 or drums of iron, over which passes a coil of wire rope. At the other side 

 of the field is a sort of truck, on sharp-edged wheels, which is caused to 

 travel at a snail's pace along, keeping step with a like forward travel of the 

 engine, by the action of gearing worked by the unwinding and winding up of 

 the wire cable on a drum or drums on the truck. This truck, which he calls 

 an " anchor," runs parallel with the engine, and, as the sharp wheels cut deep 

 into the sod, it is not overturned by the strain of the long length of cable 

 across fields. The IAVO ends of the cable are attached to a double frame of 

 ploughs, hung on wheels in the middle; six ploughs face one way, and six 

 the other. The plough-frame is so shaped, that when one set is in the ground 

 at work, the other is hoisted in the air, on the principle of the "see-saw," 

 that every one understands. To this apparatus, cumbersome, troublesome, 

 and expensive as it is, the grand prize of five hundred sovereigns was last 

 year awarded by the Royal Agricultural Society, the judges estimating that 

 a saving could be effected by it of from five to twenty per cent, in the cost of 

 ploughing. 



Smith, of "Woolston, uses the drum on or about his engine, but not that at 

 the other side of the field; in place of which he substitutes large grooved 

 pulleys, anchored to the ground by stout grapnel-hooks. He has small rollers, 

 a foot or more wide, fixed on bits of plank, on which the wire cable rolls at 

 different places throughout the whole length of the furrow, the better to 

 avoid great friction on the ground. He has also a different attachment 

 to his implements, and in fact he prefers to use different implements; for, 

 whereas Fowler takes only the ordinary plough and attaches it to a frame, 

 Smith uses the grubber, a long-tined sort of machine, with teeth shaped a 

 little like one of our wire-toothed hay-rakes. He has a patent for what he 

 calls a "turning-bow," which is in fact merely a very large clevis arrange- 

 ment, by the use of which he can turn his implement at the end of the fur- 

 row, and not be compelled to travel forward anA back, now elevating one 

 end, and now the other, as docs Fowler. 



Boydell, as a means of moving his plough, applies power to large driving- 

 wheels, to the periphery of which are attached, at equal distances from each 

 other, pieces of track, of such shape that the forward end of one locks in 

 with the rear end of its predecessor, as the revolution of the wheel brings 

 them in turn beneath, and each piece being attached by a bow to the wheel, 

 and free to move on a bolt, the wheel lays its own track, turns on it, picks 

 it up again as it moves along. Here is the sum-total of Boydell's engine, 

 except that it may be steered by a rod Avorking into gears on the truck of 

 two small front wheels, arranged to turn on a transom. All these machines 

 we saw in practical operation last year at the Royal Show at Chester, and 

 while it cannot be denied that Fowler did good ploughing, and did it contin- 

 uously; and Smith grubbed away zealously, until the whole field looked as 

 if a large drove of land-pike hogs had been turned in there over-night; and 



