THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



145 



modate its position to every shape of ground. By a 

 lever handle the driver can instantly raise the knives out 

 of reach of a large obstacle, and by another lever and 

 ratchet-motion, can back for the purpose of getting an 

 impetus when required after a stoppage. The pole is at 

 liberty vertically, so that the machine is not dependent 

 upon the horses for the regulation of the pitch or eleva- 

 tion of the cutter above the ground. The triangular 

 scissor-edgcd knife-blades are hollowed underneath, so 

 that bits of tough bent-grass, &c., instead of jamming 

 in between the knife and the fingers, or left far beneath, 

 are received into the hollow cell, and gradually rubbed 

 o cut to pieces and expelled. The breadth cut is 

 4 feet, and the fingers of wrought iron can be renewed 

 separately by screws. 



Burgess and Key's new machine, first brought out at 

 the present meeting, is a very clever and valuable im- 

 provement. The main driving-wheel, in a central 

 position in the frame, is hung in an inner frame, 

 which being hinged to the main frame at its for- 

 ward end, has a free lever movement, like the 

 coulter of a drill. This enables the wheel to 

 traverse the bottom of a furrow, or mount a ridge 

 without ceasing to drive the cutters, and without 

 interfering with the level of the cutters. The driver's- 

 seaf is erected upon the inner frame, so as to give 

 weight enough on the ground for the bite of the wheel 

 periphery, and a steel-yard and weight can be added at 

 pleasure, in case of a very hard-cutting crop. The 

 wheel is lifted up off the ground for travelling ; the main 

 frame riding always upon two large travelling-wheels. 

 The cutter-bar is attached to the frame by a hinge-joint, 

 so that it follows the conformation of the surface it 

 sweeps over, no matter what may be the relative posi- 

 tion of the frame, so that the frame may travel on one 

 side of either a ridge or furrow, and the knives will cut 

 perfectly close on the other. To pack up for removal, 

 nothing is necessary but to lift up the cutters, and raise 

 the main driving-wheel. This principle of leaving the 

 cutter-bar at perfect liberty vertically, rising or 

 sinking of its own accord at either end, without the 

 slightest concern being necessary on the part of the 

 workman, is of great merit, and will be ultimately found 

 applicable, we have no doubt, to the corn reaper as well 

 as to the grass mower. In fact, this beautiful arrange- 

 ment makes a mowing-machine almost as accommodative 

 to the hollows and protuberances of meadow land as a 

 chain-harrow is; yet in spite of the universal-joint 

 action of the combined piny of the frame and cutter- 

 bar, the accurate working of the spur-gear and crank, 

 the connecting-rod, and slide, is in no respect interfered 

 with. 



The final contest for the thraahing-machine prizs lay 

 between the four following makers : Turner of Ipswich, 

 Humphries of Pershore, Gibbons, and Sawny. The time 

 given was half-an-hour; with these results : Gibbons took 

 rather the most power, and did most work, thrashing 11 

 cwt. 3qrs. Hlbs. of corn; Humphries thrashed 11 cwt. and 

 ITlba., but with a cleaner sample of wheat — more free from white- 

 headstban that produccdby the former machiue; S&wny knocked 

 out lOcwt. 1 qr. ; and Turner, with a small-sized machine, thrash- 

 ed 5 cwt. I qr. and olbs. The prize list sbowa the decision of 

 the Judges. 



The so-called light land performances described above have 

 been made still better in favour of steam tillage, by a com- 

 parative testing of a Busby plough with the dynamometer. A 

 furrow ten inches wide and eeven inches deep gave a draught 

 of fully six cwt. ; so that instead of being pair-horse work, 

 worth 83. an acre, it is iu reality three-horse work at lOs., or 

 as some value it, 123. per acre. Fowler ploughed this ground 

 at the rate of 11 acres per day of 10 hours, with IS cwt. of 

 coal, and the labour of two men and two boys ; to the expense 

 of which must be added the cost of water carting, re- 

 moval, oil, kc, making a total of about 40s. a day, 

 or 3s. 8d. per acre. The prime cost of this twelve- 



horse power haulincr apparatus, with 800 yards of best 

 steel wire rope, is £Gd'J ; the four-furrow instrument, 

 with scarifier hearts, £81, altogether £"780. Twenty 

 per cent, annually (an excessive estimate) for interest, 

 wear and tear, and contingencies, will be £"156, say 

 153. per day for 200 days in the year, brings up tho 

 daily outlay to 55^., or a total outside cost of only 5s. 

 per acre. While by horses the ploughing would cost 

 10s. or 12s. ; indeed, if we follow the Jonrnrd of the 

 Royal Afjricultural Society on " horse power," 

 which in the data from numerous tables, of 2s. per cwt. 

 drawn ten miles (in ploughing an acre) as the cost of 

 horse work, we get just 123 per acre as the price of the 

 ploughing. The cost of Robey'.s machinery, including 

 ten-horse hauling machine, 1,200 yards of steel wire 

 rope, and thrcc-furrow plough, with scarifier breasts, 

 is £606 ; tho hands required are four men and two 

 boys; and the extent of land ploughed was about half 

 that done by the former machine ; that is, it was at the 

 rate of between five and six acres in ten hours. The 

 day's expenses being about 36s., and twenty per cent, 

 more on first cost for 200 days in a year, making alto- 

 gether 483. i)er day, or a total of 8s. to Os. per acre. 



Eddington's machinery, including two steam-engines, two 

 windlasses, ropes, and two four-furrow ploughs, coats £1,198, 

 and employs six men and two boys (not nine, as elsewhere 

 stated). The prize engines had not come to hand in time for 

 this trial, and, allowing for their superiority to the common 

 single-cylinder engines obliged to be employed on this occasion, 

 the rate' of work is about l^ acre per hour, or 12 acres a day. 

 The expenses are over 543. per day ; add 20 per cent, as be- 

 fore, or 23s. per day, and the whole cost is more than 778. per 

 day, or say 63. 6d. per acre. The apparatus of Mr. Beard, of 

 Stowe, near Buckingham, is not a manufacturer's, but a far- 

 mer's contrivance. The principal merit of it is in the price — 

 only £357, including eight-horse engine, 900 yards of steel 

 rope, and double-furrow plough. The amount of work done 

 is very small, and the coat for all high. 



The Judges took great pains to ascertain the merits 

 of the steam-ploughs : they have tested the amount of work 

 done per hour and per cwt. of coal, the time requisite for 

 shifting the apparatus ; and, besides seeking the value of the 

 ploughing by means of the dynamometer, and measuring the 

 sorts of ground, have also taken the levels of the surface 

 operated upon. The trial in the heavy-land field, where the 

 draught of a Busby plough, with a furrow ten by seven inches, 

 averages aloug a fifteeu-chaiu length of field no less than 12 

 hundredweight, and in some places where never ploughed so 

 deep before, much more is the moat extraordinary ever witnessed 

 in steam culture. The average incline of the field is 100 feet 

 rise in the fifteen chains length, but nearly half the distance 

 actually has a slope of one in four-and-a-half. Of course horses 

 would never attempt to draw a plough up at all ; but ou the 

 level the draught shows that at 2s. per cwt. (as before taken), 

 the cost per acre by horse labour would be 243. per acre; but 

 as six extra good powerful horses must necessarily be yoked at 

 a disadvantage for pulling, as compared with a team of two or 

 four, many practical meu consider that 36a. per acre is the 

 most proper estimate. Now, how much of this tremendous 

 ploughing did Fowler accomplish ? Taking three furrows up- 

 hill and four furrows down, he turned over eleven-sixteenths 

 of an acre in one hour, or at the rate of nearly six and three- 

 quarter acres per day. The day's expenses and per-ceutage 

 being £2 178. (with an extra man ou the plough) the total cost 

 per acre is 8s. 6d.— that is only one-fourth to one-third the 

 price of horse labour. 



It now remains only to walk through the stands, 

 and chronicle remarkable or meritorious articles. But 

 what a sad gap in the attractions of the yard is opened 

 by the absenteeism of the great firms whose ex- 

 traordinary exhibitions of multiform machinery and 

 world-famed implements, and whose interesting ar- 

 rangements of farm mechanism in motion, used to draw 

 so many spectators and constitute so grand a feature of 

 the show ! Still we have had an excellent collection 

 of the useful and beautiful, in wood and metal, for sup- 

 plying every mechanical want of the husbandman, or 



