166 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



become a common truism ; but the phase has a striking signi- 

 ficance for all that. Very few years have sufficed to give the 

 farmer an auxiliary force of steam power equal to 40,000 or 

 50,000 horses : he will require only about seven times this 

 amount to effect his tillage ; and the steam plough, being re- 

 quired for every large farm or group of small holdings, awaits 

 a larger and more rapid sale than has been obtained for the 

 thrashing-machine — which is sufficient for the work of many 

 farms together. Anil, as we shall show presently, the cost 

 price no longer fernis too high an investment for the ordinary 

 occupier ; so that the substitution of the steam-engine for a 

 portion of the teams may indeed be expected to progress with 

 rapidity as the advantage becomes generally known. 



Let us look at the extent of the field waiting for the new 

 power. Our light soils have a very extensive distribution, 

 and ftheir mcchaniral being sfarcely so important as their 

 chymical treatment, steam culture can be only of limited 

 benefit upon them. A flinty chalk sucks its surface dry, a 

 thin stonebrash soil lets the rain run through it; and, except 

 in the weeping North, none of the very light lands are sub- 

 jected to much tillage, for fear of drought. Hence the slicing 

 of a shallow furrow, paring and stirring by the scarifier and 

 grubber, and solidifying with the seam-presser, form the 

 principal processes of tillage. Excepi on some moist light 

 earths, in which the couch revels, steam culture will, tLere- 

 fore, make its last conquests in these manure rather than 

 labour-needing districts. 



The most extended of our various classes of soil are, per- 

 haps, the friable loams and other lands capable of moderately 

 deepculture. They may be found interspersed both in strong 

 clay and light land districts ; they occur upon the drift beds 

 covering various formations — on the green sand, oolite, new 

 red sandstone — and form almost the whole of the alluvial 

 tracts of deep land free from stones. Here is an immense 

 field for steam-power in rooting up foul stubble with the cul- 

 tivating] tine, turning over the clover-lea with share and 

 mouldboard, and subsoiling and trenching, so as to deepen 

 the stratum of staple soil, either by disintegrating the under- 

 lying rock or the cemented pan, or by uplifting from a foot 

 depth the subsoil which may need only air and light in order 

 to increase the farm downwards while the area remains 

 unbounded as before. For it is becoming evident in macy 

 ways that tillage is the portion of farm art to which the 

 managers of these lands must chiefly look for help. Ammo- 

 niacal " artificials" have greatly assisted our corn lands in 

 their difficulty ; but though the chemist may declare how 

 many pounds of nitrogen will raise a bushel of wheat, he knows 

 that on soils not rich in native " minerals" the system cannot 

 last long. The more we force and stimulate the robbery of 

 these earthy constituents, the faster are we abstracting the 

 natural fertility of the land; and this must be restored by 

 applications of mineral manure, or else by additions from the 

 subsoil brought up in deep tillage. Neither can the sea- 

 birds' guano nor the phosphoric bone be imported for ever. 

 Again, the stock-farmers are growing more frightened every 

 year at the failure of their winter keep of roots, while the 

 mangold is only a partial and expensive substitute for the 

 turnip ; and the soundness of the invaluable bulbs is depend- 

 ent, in perhaps a principal measure, upon a depth of 

 tilth and due moisture in the summer seed-bed — to be secured 

 only by the avoidance of spring ploughing, which necessitates 

 the practice of autumn fallowing. And it is just this new 

 power of tilling and cleansing land in the couple of busy 

 months during and immediately following harvest that forms 

 one main point of advantage in steam culture. What im- 

 proved cultivation, what additional crops, what new rotations, 

 what increased yields per acre, are now hindered and sacrificed 

 T.iwing to the infesting presence of the couch, and the impossi- 

 bility of getting the tillage processes at particular emergencies 

 completed in due time with any force of horse-flesh that 

 the farmer can afford to maintain the year round, we can 

 scarcely estimate at all, except by casting forward an ima- 

 ginative glance at the husbandry of the future. But we can 

 perceive how a prolific deep culture will be all but universal 

 with the aid of the new draught-power ; for in the compara- 

 tively few examples hitherto existing of regular !)-inch plough- 

 ing, and in the results of 12-iuch subsoiling (which from its 

 expense with many horses can only be occasional), every farmer 

 has learnt where lies the secret of great and healthy crops, 

 and how inferior lauds may b? made equal to the rich. At 



present two things prevent such deep tillage as 12-iDch 

 ploughing in the regular working of whole farms — the in- 

 sufficiency of the ordinary teams that can be spared for the 

 extra-labour, and the uselessuess, or at least after- expensive- 

 ness of such driving into the sub-stratum until the upper 

 staple has been cleansed of root-weeds. To keep even the 

 five or six inches at present cultivated tolerably clear from the 

 encumbering and greedy devourers of nutriment stored for 

 our crops, is trial enough for most agriculturists ; and they 

 are bold and enterprisicg who expend money and fatigue 

 their draught animals iu deep ploughing and trenching, while 

 the mouldboard inverting the slice, and the long series of 

 horses' hoofs dinting into the Surrow, form the best ap- 

 paratus for planting still deeper the noxious roots which plague 

 the soil above. 



Hence it is in better cul-ivation rendered practicable, more 

 tbau iu greater comparative cheapness of operations, that the 

 gain of steam ploughing will be principally felt. Still the 

 pecuniary saving is considerable; and for these reasons : The 

 engine, never tiring, compresses a larger amount of acres 

 worked into one day, and so forwards the seeding of crops-— 

 always a point of great moment, and equivalent to a consi- 

 derable increase of produce in an unsettled season ; its work 

 is of much greater value when done, owing to the thorough 

 diviaiou and loosening of the texture of the ground by the 

 rapid motion of the implement, the feeedom from injurious 

 pressure and sledging action upon the under soil, and the sod- 

 deuing and closing up of the interstitial spaces for air and 

 moisture, by the trampling of teams in any but the driest 

 weather ; its tillage is deeper and more regular, and, from its 

 superior excellence, has been uniformly found to occasion an 

 increased yield per acre. It commences autumnal cleaning 

 when the teams are carting the harvest, with a process so pe- 

 culiarly effective that animal power is not able to imitate it, 

 and worth as much per acre as the two or three heavy spring 

 operations it saves. Add also to this list of advantages (any 

 cue of which may warrant the purchase of the apparatus on a 

 large holding) the fact of possessing a mechanical power 

 which puts forth a hauling power of 15 to 25 cwt. draught at 

 a speed of three, or three miles and a-half per hour, for as 

 many hours a day as you please, compared with the power of 

 horses limited to 4 up to 12 cwt. draught, at the sluggish pace 

 of two miles an hour, and with long resting times during but 

 eight hours a day. The difference in the amount of work 

 either in area tilled, or depth of culture rendered possible, to- 

 gether with the vastly superior quality and mechanical 

 efficiency of the tillage, cannot be expressed to the practical 

 farmer better thau by this statement of applicable force and 

 its speed in motion. 



Having explained the numerous sources of advantage from 

 adopting the steam plough on land of medium tenacity — by 

 far the most widely spread of English soils — let us inquire 

 into the exigencies and prospects of the true heavy lands. 

 These are the soils on the London clay, plastic clay, weald 

 clay, gault clay, Oxfcrd clay, blue lias, the clays of the 

 oolite and coal formations, the chalk marl, and drift — all more 

 or less stiff, adhesive, retentive of moisture, and intractable 

 when either wet or dry ; in the former state working up into 

 soap or mortar, sticking to and rolling before the plough ; in 

 the latter condition hardening into cracked and fissured brick, 

 almost impenetrable by the plough-share. Properly workable 

 only for a short time in autumn, and a less interval during the 

 capricious weather of spring, a great amount of horse-power 

 is obliged to be kept thoughout the whole year, in order to 

 accomplish in the happy moments all the necessary cultivation 

 of this fretful and obstinate soil. Yet this clay has generally 

 a most tantalizing quality, being chymically rich iu the 

 mineral constituents of all crops— inexhaustible for corn. 

 Draining, subsoiling, liming, clay-burning, and other costly 

 means of subduing and softening its mechanical texture and 

 ameliorating its properties, are at present but partially prac- 

 tised. In fact, the clay-laud farmer is at a ruinous expense 

 for the shallow four or five inch culture which is commonly all 

 he can afford to carry out ; and, as he can neither grow roots 

 nor consume them to any extent, he is debarred from stock 

 farming, and must trust the scale of the grain-market for a 

 livelihood. With a prospect only of cheap supplies, no wonder 

 that his outlook for the future should be clouded with mis- 

 giving. It is all very well to recommend bim live stock, now 

 that cereals do not pay. The difficulty already is to make 



