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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



any precision. The quantity of implements in use, and 

 the wear and tear on them, must be large. Mr. 

 McQueen, in 1835, drawing his deductions from the 

 report of the Agricultural Committee of 1833, calcu- 

 lated the dead stock, chiefly implements, carts, machi- 

 nery, &c., at £16'? for a farm of 100 acres, and the 

 wear-and-tear thereon at ^44 per annum. Mr. Braith- 

 waite Poole, in his Statistics of British Commerce for 

 1850, stated the quantity of agricultural implements 



conveyed through the kingdom yearly, at 1,450 tons, 

 worth £"72,500. But this is necessarily a very vague 

 and insufficient estimate, and applies only to those sent 

 by railway. Still, adding this to the value of the imple- 

 ments and carts and machinery exported, it gives a total 

 value of upwards of £3,000,000. Of carts and waggons 

 there are said to be upwards of 300,000 in use in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, which at an average value of £lb 

 each, represent a stock of £4,500,000 in the country. 



THE LEADING FEATURES OF THE IMPLEMENT DEPARTMENT 

 OF THE CANTERBURY SHOW. 



The show-yard of the Royal Agricultural Society, 

 which has so recently concluded its meeting at Canter- 

 bury, although presenting perhaps in a less degree than 

 usual, new phases of mechanical novelty, was more than 

 ordinarily suggestive of practical deductions. What 

 we shall be spared then, in the noticing of novelties, we 

 shall have to give in another, and let us hope a not less 

 useful direction. Nor is this comparative absence of 

 implemental novelty to be much regretted ; for in truth, 

 of late years, we have observed, not without regret, a 

 striving after novelty, for novelty's sake apparently, more 

 than from a real desire to make such novelty of practical 

 and easily available utility. However arising, we do not 

 pretend to say ; but certainly in some quarters the feel- 

 ing seemed to exist that it was necessary for their busi- 

 ness reputation to bring out something new. This, 

 however, it is necessary to state, was more noticeable 

 amongst a certain class of makers who had not gained 

 the repute and position of the magnates of the trade. 

 To revel in the intricacies of mechanical movements 

 and in the niceties of constructive details, is of com- 

 paratively easy attainment ; but to reduce the number 

 of movements and machines by which a given amount 

 of work is to be done, is the work of a higher order of 

 mechanical geniuses. Mechanical ingenuity is no real, 

 or rather it is not the only test of practical ability. To 

 do the most work with the fewest number of machines, 

 and these of the simplest possible character, is the real 

 work of the agricultural engineer. We are progressing 

 most favourably in this the truly philosophical direction, 

 but, as before said, not seldom have we witnessed at- 

 tempts to go in the very opposite. In this respect the 

 Canterbury show presented some oddly absurd inven- 

 tions, to serve at once as an example and a warning, in 

 connection with the point on which we are dilating. 

 Nor are implement makers alone to be blamed for this; 

 for in truth they are often compelled by the existence of 

 a bad system of farming to resort to this wrong position. 

 Some of our machines and implements are but made 

 necessary by the requirements of a bad system of farm- 

 ing ; improve this, and you lessen the mechanical aids 

 required. So much truth is there in this, that we go 

 unhesitatingly with those who hold that the higher the 

 degree of culture, the fewer will be the machines needed. 

 All true progress in mechanical improvement tends to 

 simplification. And in no branch is this so much de'. 



manded as in agriculture. The very processes in which 

 she is so busily engaged, and the material on which she 

 operates demand simplicity of parts, strength of con- 

 struction, and ease of operation. In hastening the arri- 

 val of the time when multiplicity will give way to a few, 

 but these the most effective of implements, engineers 

 and agriculturists have a task to perform. We use the 

 term agriculturists in the widest sense, as including 

 landlords and owners of the soil, as well as.those engaged 

 in the practical working of it. The one can mightily 

 help the other. The engineer has, in certain depart- 

 ments, brought matters to that point that, if further 

 progress is desired, he must be aided by those who have 

 extended influence in the country districts, as the large 

 farmers or the landed proprietors whom they can certainly 

 interest, or, to put it in another way, whose " interest" 

 they can certainly move, in the furtherance of those appli- 

 ances destined to revolutionize agriculture. We refer here 

 more especially to the extension of steam-cultivation. 



Although public enthusiasm, or rather, to speak 

 more correctly, the mode of giving public vent 

 to it, has cooled down, steam-cultivation has taken a 

 wide stride ahead since the last meeting of the Society 

 at Warwick. During the twelve months which have 

 intervened, so large an extent of work has been done as 

 to justify all of us who expressed hopefully a good 

 opinion of its capabilities, and that at a time when doing 

 so subjected one to expressions of pity or contempt not 

 the most flattering to one's nous or judgment. "A wet 

 autumn," says an admirable authority on the subject, 

 whom we are glad to quote in support of our own 

 opinions long ago expressed, " may have been disadvan- 

 tageous to the steam-cultivator, but a dripping summer 

 has given full proof of its superiority to a horse-worked 

 implement ; the power to get forward with the tillage 

 has enabled farmers to be hoeing and singling turnips, 

 while their neighbours with the horse system are 



scarcely able to sow It is clearly established, by 



the experience of the past year, that crops on the 

 steam-ploughed land are less dependent than others 

 upon the vicissitudes of the weather. The more deeply- 

 worked soil, untrodden by horses, and tilled in good 

 time, is found to be moist when other land is suffering 

 from drought ; the corn is stout and flourishing, while 

 ordinarily-managed crops are flaccid and weak— the 

 difference of produce in favour of steam-tillage being 



