THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



191 



board. The 55 per cent, due to the operation of the 

 share and coulter must not be supposed to arise merely 

 from the dividing of the soil by their cutting edges ; the 

 share has a considerable weight of earth resting upon it, 

 not only occasioning great friction upon the upper sur- 

 face of the share (which cannot be obviated), but greatly 

 adding to the pressure and friction of the uader-side of 

 the sharr upon the furrow-bottom. By forming the 

 ploughs in our machine so that no part shall touch the 

 furrow-bottom, except a small portion of the share- 

 edges and soles, and by bearing the entire weight upon 

 wheeh of considerable diameter and broad peripheries — 

 or, perhaps, applying the " endless-rails" to prevent 

 sinking — a very large proportion of the friction, cohesion, 

 &c., of the horse-plough may be dispensed with. There 

 is also another consideration. A common plough exerts 

 a great side-pressure against the upright land-side of 

 the furrow, owing partly to the reaction of the furrow- 

 slice in turning over sideways, but principally occasioned 

 by the diagonal direction of the share's cut. If the 

 cutting-edge of the share make an an^le of forty-five 

 degrees with the direction of the plough's advance, there 

 will be a pressure against the side of the furrow equal to 

 that needed to overcome the resistance directly in front 

 of the share. But when we fix two sets of ploughs in a 

 frame, half having right band, and half left hand shares, 

 instead of any side-thrusts being taken with a sliding 

 action upon the face of the furrow, the side-pressures of 

 all the ploughs neutralize each other. By proper atten- 

 tion to these points, I conceive that an economy of 

 power would result. 



I have not time to detail the simple steerage by 

 slightly locking the axle of the front wheels, the adjust- 

 ing of the hind wheels to make them act partially as 

 " soles" to the ploughs, or the short coil of reserve rope 

 and the clip by which it is held. I need merely add 

 that all the arrangements might be very simple, and that 

 the implements would travel with their wheels partly 

 running on the unploughed ground, but chiefly along 

 the smooth and clean furrow-bottoms, and only for an 

 instant cross over the ploughed land. Of course the 

 draught of a large implement taking six furrows at once 

 must be heavy, but the load is sustained by the windlass 

 and not by the anchorage. Perhaps the chief objection is 

 the difficulty of making furrows of equable depth on 

 uneven land by an implement of such great width. 



Having now concluded my review of the subject of 

 steam- ploughing properly so-called, and offered various 

 suggestions for its better accomplishment, I must briefly 

 allude to 



Nkw Processes, Rotary Forking and Digging. 



First. Implements operating hy Traction. — Mr. 

 Smith, of VVoolston, is very successfully carrying out a 

 novel system of tillage, by means of trenching, sub- 

 soiling, and grubbing implements, without using the 

 common plough except for turning over clover lea and 

 sward land, and this, indeed, he thinks to be hardly 

 necessary. He combines subsoiling tines with the 

 double mould-board plough, and follows with the single 

 Bubsoiler, so that the land is left ploughed up in " drills" 

 or " ridges," the subsoil at the bottom of the open fur- 

 rows and trenches broken up and exposed to the atmos- 

 phere, while the strips of ground covered by the up- 

 turned furrow-slices are also stirred and disintegrated. 

 On all soils that are not thin or light, this must be a 

 remarkably effectual fallow process ; the partial inver- 

 sion and complete stirring exposing such a large pro- 

 portion of the staple and subsoil to atmospheric action. 

 The subsoiling tines are exceedingly efficient, somewhat 

 resembling spades, or square fluked anchors, in shape, 

 and so sloped as not only to enter and pulverize deeply 

 the entire breadth of a furrow each, but also to raise a 



considerable portion of the subsoil for admixture with 

 the upper staple. And the various cultivators used 

 (manufactured by Messrs. Howard, of Bedford) are 

 remarkably simple, strong, and effective, and possess 

 very admirable contrivances for steering, raising and 

 lowering, and fuming round. My paper being con- 

 fined to mechanical methods of applying st elm -power 

 to tillage, rather than referring to tillage itself, I say no 

 more here, except that Mr. Smith's land and crops 

 testify to the soundness and value of his husbandry 

 upon very heavy and also upon some other qualities of 

 land ; and his experience, fortified by that of various 

 agriculturists, shows that there is economy in expedi- 

 tiously breaking up ground by these implements at a 

 total expense of 6s. 6d. to 10s. per acre. 



We have been long familiar with the revolving har- 

 row, forker, or scarifier, as brought before the public by 

 Mr. Gibson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Mr. Samuelson, 

 of Banbury, and other inventors. And 1 believe the 

 decision of practical judges respecting them to be that, 

 while they may be admirable in certain cases for stirring 

 ground already tilled, they are not able properly to break 

 up and invert unploughed land. However, I do not 

 quite despair of this form of digger for effecting the first 

 and principal operation of tillage. Mr. Smith, of Lois- 

 Weedon, has contrived an implement of this kind which 

 answers perfectly well for pulverizing and lifting up the 

 subsoil from the bottom of the trenches previously 

 ploughed along his "intervals," casting the furrow- 

 slices of staple underneath, and depositing the subsoil 

 upon the top. The tines (of proper cycloidal curve), 

 instead of leing arranged upon separate discs, forming 

 a set of independently-revolving rowels, are all fixed 

 upon one barrel ; as the machine advances, the earth is 

 crumbled and raised bodily by the teeth, and while it 

 hangs momentarily suspended in air before being cast 

 off by fixed scrapers, a couple of small mould-boards 

 gather the upper soil (previously turned by a plough) 

 on each side into the bottom of the trench, the earth 

 from the digger falling upOn it. 



Could not a simple implement of this character be 

 made for ordinary husbandry, in which the whole sur- 

 face has to be cultivated .' Suppose a similar digging 

 cylinder or wheel, to take only the width cf a common 

 furrow, preceded by a couple of skim- coulters or small 

 ploughs, that would pare the stubble or sward, and cast 

 it into the furrow left open at the previous course ; then 

 the earth raised by the digger might be diverted as it fell 

 by a sloping mould-board, and laid upon the top of the 

 thin slice deposited by the skim-coulters. In this way 

 a perfect inversion and burying of the surface would be 

 secured, while at the same time there would be a tho- 

 rough copaminution of the soil, and no pressure or 

 sledging upon the furrow bottom. I think the draught 

 of such an implement would be comparatively light, as 

 the weight would all be supported upon the axis of the 

 digging-wheel, and help to force the tines into the 

 ground. The implement would also be very convertible ; 

 for, by taking off the mould-board we should have a 

 rotary subsoiler instead of a trencher, the soil being 

 mixed instead of inverted ; and by adding other digging- 

 barrels on each side, we might have a wide grubber or 

 cultivator. For the purpose first mentioned— that of 

 ploughing or trenching better than the plough— perhaps 

 it would be equally efficient with the combined imple- 

 ment, proposed I believe by Mr. Fowler, in which a 

 furrow-slice is ploughed the full depth, turned precisely 

 upside-down, and then broken by the points of Nor- 

 wegian-harrow rowells following upon it. 



Hanson's potato forker is another form of rotating 

 pulverizer. Could not Mr. Fowler apply the revolving 

 blades or tines to cut the furrow slices of his plough 

 cropswise ? Motion might be derived from one of tb« 



