76 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



beautiful m»nner in which Mr. Smith's heavy clay land was 

 laid out. He bad no doubt but, upon c!ay lands, steam 

 cultivation nould be a considerable advantage to farmers, whe- 

 ther practical or amateur. As regarded light land, the ad- 

 vantages of the use of steam power were by no means clear. 

 He could corroborate all that Mr. WuUis said with regard to 

 Mr. Smith's farm. The superiority of the laud, compared 

 with other laud in the neighbourhood, was very marked in- 

 deed ; and that was saying a great deal. He thought that, 

 where a farmer occupied four or five hundred acres of arable 

 land, the use of steam must answer very well : for much leas 

 than that quantity, he questioned whether it would be ad- 

 visable to resort to it. With regard to the comparative ad- 

 vantages of a fixed and a portable engine for general purposes, 

 he would observe that, if he were to start a portable engine 

 to-morrow, he would probably find that he required a fixed 

 engine as well. Upon a stock farm, where the engine would 

 have to griud and perform other operations of the same kind 

 very frequently, there would, if it were portable, be a great 

 deal to interfere with steam cultivatiou. 



Mr. Parkinson (Notts) said, if any lai.d could be 

 ploughed at the rate which Mr. Wells had meutioned, it was 

 such laud as that gentleman was himself farming. He knew 

 very little land iu England of the same depth and description 

 of soil that was so easy to work. Mr. Wells' remarks on 

 steam cultivation must be viewed with caution, because his 

 was not a district which was as well adapted to show the power 

 of the steam engine as the stronger lands referred to by Mr. 

 Smith and Mr. Howard. 



Mr. Williams (Baydon, Hungerford) thought with 

 Mr. Smith, that the paper read that eveniog was not much in 

 favour of steam cultivation ; but he would appeal to all who 

 were poaeessed of a steam plough or cultivator, or who had 

 ever tried one, as to the successful working of that implement. 

 A friend of his— Mr. Richard Strattou, of Broad Hinton— 

 had a twelve-horse engine of Fowler's, with which he had 

 broken up two hundred acres this spring at an average rate of 

 from seven to ten acres a day. Mr. Stratton's land was some 

 of the strongest, stiffest, and wettest soil that could be met 

 with ; and yet he expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the 

 result. In fact, it would have been utterly impossible to bring 

 the land into its present condition by means of horse-power. 

 Taking into account the compression from the horses' feet — 

 treading the ground as they did, and the subsequent labour 

 required on that account — he believed steam cultivation to be 

 equal to two ploughiugs by horses. The subject on the card 

 was steam versus horses and manual labour ; and not as to 

 what system was the best, and he would read a letter he had 

 received from Mr. R. Pullcn, of Sutton Courtney, near Abing- 

 don, who was using Mr. Smith's tackle ; and although he was 

 interested in Mr. Fowler's, it was the system he was advocating, 

 and he was pleased to place such a testimonial before the 

 meeting — 



March 25th, 1860. 

 " Agreeable with your request, I will give you the results of 

 my experience on steam cultivation. I bought my apparatus 

 in the autumn of 1853, which was a very dry one, iu fact, my 

 strong land was so hard I could not plough it with Howard's 

 ploughs, but the steam cultivator smashed it up and nearly 

 cleaned the land at one operation, and I think the advantage 

 derived therefrom was nearly equal to the outlay of the appa- 

 ratus. Another advantage is in the saving of horse labour. I 

 worked on the average 30 horses before I applied steam power, 

 1 have only worked 18 since, and am always forward with my 

 work, which last autumn was of very great importance. The 

 first 100 acres of wheat I drilled one bushel to the acre, and 

 my wheat looks as well as it is possible for wheat to look, 

 while, on the contrary, my neighbours, who never plant leas 

 than two bushels per acre, have not got half a plant, and some 

 are drilling more in with it, and others aie ploughing it up 

 and sowing barley." 



He thought this would be convincing to all, of the good effects 

 of steam power ; and he had no doubt it was the effect of 

 early tillage which steam alone enabled him to do. Again, 

 last week, being at Mr. King's of Beedon, who was a member 

 of the coramittee of that club, he saw him using a steam cul- 

 tivator which Mr. Plummer, who had taken Peasemore Farm 

 just by, had put on the iarm as part of the stock, and had let 

 It out to hire, Mr. King paying the owner 10s. an acre for 

 cultivating about one hundred acres for him. Mr. Plummer 



was very well satisfied with the sum which he received for the 

 use of the machine ; aud Mr. King was equally satisfied with 

 the manner in which the work was done — in fact, he said he 

 cever saw such work before. Ten shillings an acre was the 

 expense, exclusive of coal aud water, aud of beer for the meu 

 employed. In fact there was not a single iudividual who he 

 knew possessed a set of tackle, whether of Mr. Smith's or Mr. 

 Fowler's, but was perfectly satisfied with the results. He re- 

 flected with pleasure on the part which he had taken in that 

 room, and elsewhere, in promoting the cause of steam cultiva- 

 tion. All the anticipations iu which he had iadulgedas to its 

 beneficial effects in actual working had now been verified. 

 With respect to the observations made by Mr. Thomas, that 

 the land would suffer on account of the manure if the horses 

 were done away with, he would beg to read a short paragraph 

 from the Journal of the Club, for May, 1855. The paper in 

 which he had the pleasure of reading iu tliat room, aud which 

 was a similar subject to that read this evening. " I have been 

 often atked the question, 'If you do away with your horses, 

 what will you do for manure?' The question would be 

 better put, what will jou do with the food the horses 

 would consume ? " If they had a certain amount of 

 farm-produce to turn into manure, they must have 

 that manure, whether it were consumed by bullocks or 

 by horses ; aud he maintained that the food which was 

 saved from the consumption of hordes Vy the employment 

 of steam would make an equal amount of manure in 

 passing through a number of bullocks or sheep, while there 

 would be an additional quantity of manure in the form of the 

 soot and ashes which the engine produced. Tdis question 

 had an important bearing on the supply of the population with 

 animal food. Last week mutton was quoted in the metropo- 

 litan market out of the wool at 63. 6d. per Slbs., a price which 

 he never scarcely heaid of before ; and it the British public were 

 to be called upon to pay the price which must be demanded 

 by the butchers under such circumstances, it was due to them 

 that the farmers should consider to what extent they could 

 reduce the number of horses, aud keep other animals instead. 

 He hoped to see the system of steam cultivation carried out 

 all over the kingdom. 



Mr. Bradshaw (Kuole, Kent) having had some experi- 

 ence in steam cultivation, he had no hesitation in saying that 

 where buildings were conveniently situated, and where the foui- 

 course system was adopted, a very considerable saving might 

 be effected in horse-power. He had a fixed steam engine, which 

 he employed half the day in thra3hin;4 and the other half in 

 cutting chaff, grinding food for pigs or buUccks, pulping tur- 

 n-p^, aud other operations of that kind. As regarded the wear 

 and tear of steam engines and other implements, a great deal of 

 course depended on the manner in which they were put up. 

 Considerable loss might be incurred for want of proper care. 



Mr. Fisher Hobbs (Boxted) said the paper read by Mr. 

 Wells displayed very great research, and conveyed a large 

 amount of valuable information ; but if iu his anxiety to 

 advance the cultivatiou of the soil he put forth any calcula- 

 tions which were founded on incorrect data, he did what was 

 calculated to mislead others. For example, he said that a 

 pair of agricultural horses could ordinarily plough an acre and 

 a half of land per day ; whereas in the course oi his (Mr. 

 Ilobbs's) 30 years' practice, he had found the greatest 

 difiiculty in gett ng two horses to plough, upon the ave- 

 rage, an acre per day. He felt particularly obliged to 

 Mr. Wells for his lecture, considering that no paper 

 had been placed before the agricultural world which entered 

 into the matter so fully and clearly. There were one or 

 two instances, which appeared to him to demand special 

 attention. One was, wliether or not the common steam- 

 engines which were generally used for threshing purposes 

 were suflaciently powerful to be applied to steam-cultivation. 

 His own opinion was that they were generally too weak for 

 that purpose; while, on the other hand, he feared that the 

 farmers of the present day had not sufficient capital to culti- 

 vate their farms properly, even without steam-cultivation. He 

 could not agree with his friend Mr, Howard, that farmers 

 ought to buy steam-cultivators themselves; he was rather in- 

 clined to the opinion of Mr. Wells, that if they were to be ge- 

 nerally used, the object must be effected by "means of com- 

 panies. There had, he thought, always been 1 deficiency of 

 power in the steam-engines applied to culi.v.itors, and he 

 also thought that the engines and implements were not suffi- 



