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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



the " duty" performed by the engine, as expressed in 

 the pounds weight of coal consumed per hour for each 

 horse-power of the engine. 



In ordinary cases the duty of a steam-engine is cal- 

 culated at Gibs, of coal consumed per hour for each 

 horse- power. In many engines, however, a much higher 

 degree of efficiency than this is obtained. In the cele- 

 brated pumping engines of Cornwall, by using steam 

 expansively, and by due attention to boiler arrange- 

 ments, a "duty" is obtained expressed by 31bs. of coal 

 consumed per hour per horse-power — this, even, in 

 some instances, being surpassed by some engines, which 

 give a " duty " of 1 Jibs, per hour per horse-power. It 

 is a matter affording, not a little gratification to those 

 interested in the progress of steam as applied to agri- 

 cultural purposes, to know that the results of the 

 " trials " of agricultural steam-engines at Carlisle and 

 Chester have shown that they can display " duty " as 

 satisfactory as the Cornish engines above referred to; 

 some of them giving a duty so high as S^lbs., others of 

 41bs. and 51bs. per hour per horse-power. 



The practical farmer should not, however, expect 

 to obtain a duty so satisfactory as that displayed 

 by the result of show-yard trials, in the ordinary 

 every-day work of the farm. He must remember 

 that the engines exhibited are in the best possible 

 condition to do good work, with all parts new and 

 in good order ; clean, unfurred tubes ; and supplied, 

 moreover, with fuel of a much higher quality than 

 is generally used in practice. Carefully as the " trials" 

 are now gone through, and much as the results may 

 be depended upon, we nevertheless think that "re- 

 sults" of a much more highly practical nature 

 would be obtained, could some system of trial be in- 

 augurated, the peculiarities of which would be as much 

 as possible in accordance with those of the every-day 

 practice of the farm. There are many points of infinite 

 importance to the farmer, which cannot be tested or even 

 brought out for consideration in the ordinary routine of 

 the show-yard trials. These must be eliminated through 

 continued practice — that practice which alone can show 

 the difference between a machine or implement fitted to 

 do its work under the rough handling or the awkward 

 management of the ordinary farm labourer, and one which 

 is best calculated only for the comparatively elegant and 

 gentle treatment of the show-yard. The result of a 

 show trial, unfortunately, is not always an index to the 

 value of a machine or implement in the field or in the 

 steading. The nearer, therefore — we incline to think — 

 we bring our trials to answer the condition ful- 

 filled by ordinary farm practice, the more valuable 

 will bo the practical results to the farmer. Without 

 being in any way desirous to find fault captiously, 

 and while gladly and gratefully acknowledging the 

 great benefit resulting to agriculture from the 

 shows and their trials carried out during the 

 last twenty years, we are nevertheless constrained 

 to confess that the present "system" of " trials" 

 is one which demands careful and instant revision ; 

 taking it out of the region of dilettantism in 

 which much of it dwells, and placing it in that of every- 



day practice. Trials couducted during a period of 

 time in which it is utterly impossible to eliminate the 

 peculiarities of working of an implement or a machine, 

 or of its capabilities to meet all the exigencies of daily 

 practice — and conducted, moreover, under circum- 

 stances, in many cases, the opposite of those met with 

 in the ordinary routine of farm-operations— can never 

 be productive of " results" which can be unhesitatingly 

 accepted by the farmer as an evidence of their practical 

 value. A report from a brother-farmer as 'to the 

 working of a machine which he has severely tested 

 under all circumstances of practice, favourable and 

 unfavourable, and which has stood the test, will be more 

 valued by the farmer anxious to purchase than all the 

 evidences offered by the prize-list, or the results of the 

 trials of the show-yard, conducted on the present 

 system ; which, although we believe that it is carried 

 out faithfully and anxiously, is not expansive enough in 

 principle to embrace all the points desiderated by the 

 daily-increasing and all-important wants of the farm. 



These remarks, although induced by the subject of the 

 steam-engines trials, are not meant to apply solely to 

 that department of mechanism — the battle-ground of 

 many disputants, in which the hard blows, but 

 sometimes little of the "gentle courtesies" of the 

 "lists" of old, are given and displayed — but are de- 

 signed to embrace the whole field of agricultural i»i- 

 jilements, using this term in its widest acceptation. 



A full critique of the steam engines entered for compe- 

 tition, their peculiarities of arrangement, and the results 

 of the " trials," having already appeared in the columns of 

 this Journal, as also a notice of the thrashing machines 

 — the only special department we have not yet adverted 

 to — we have little else to do now but to congratulate 

 our readers, despite our apparent fault-finding, at the 

 results of the Chester Show, those having immediate 

 reference to the grand agent of steam. " With its 

 happy exemplification," as we have elsewhere remarked, 

 " of what the steam engine can do for the farmer, in 

 thrashing his grain, in preparing it for market, in 

 crushing the corn, cutting the fodder, pulping the 

 turnip, or, above all, dragging the plough — the Chester 

 Show may be said to be the apotheosis of steam as ap- 

 plied to agriculture. It was (he grand feature of the 

 great gathering of the votaries of Ceres. Before it, all 

 other points of interest ' paled their ineffectual fires.' 

 It has not only afforded an opportunity to show what 

 steam has done for agriculture, but it has yielded un- 

 mistakable evidence of the much greater things it can 

 yet do. It has pointed out fully and fairly the direction 

 in which future efforts must be made if rapid progress 

 in the future is desiderated. It was the inauguration 

 of a new era, bright with the hopes of difficulties 

 encountered but to be overcome ; of a time fast ap- 

 proaching when t'ue desert shall be made glad — when 

 dull places, sad and sterile now, shall be bright with the 

 trophies of peaceful and lightened labour — when great 

 tracts shall be wrested from ocean's hands, and instead 

 of waving sea-weeds or marshy plants, be made to yield 

 to the sounding scythe, or the rapid reaper shocks, of 

 the smiling corn—when the marsh shall be freed from 



