THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



507 



it, and cleans it. How iviuch more would it cost to 

 attend on eighteen horses? I could enlarge upon this 

 comparison in extenso, but in these days it is only in 

 agriculture that such a question would be entertained, 

 and I must say 1 feci humiliated tliat my friend Morton 

 in his recent excellent paper has taken so favourable a 

 view of the endurance and availability of horse-power 

 as compared with steam. In the great Cornish puniping- 

 engines, which are considered as the most economic in 

 combustion, coal being dearer there, three pounds of 

 coal per hour will produce one horse-power; so that as- 

 suming that four hours' inceasant work would exhaust a 

 horse for twenty-four hours, twelve pounds of coal, 

 costing five farthings (or twenty shillings per ton), would 

 do as much work as a horse which costs 2s. This is no 

 exaggeration. Even the common portable agricultural 

 engines — which are far less economical in fuel than the 

 fixed condensing engines— will, when in perfect order, 

 produce a day's work equal to one horse-power for 

 twenty-four pounds of coal, or twopence half-penny. 

 The trials of these engines by the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, as reported by the judges, show a consumption 

 of about five pounds of coal per horse-power per hour. 

 A very respectable miller assured me that he once, for a 

 wager, ground two hundred quarters of corn with four- 

 teen shillings and sixpence worth of coal, which would 

 be under two-pence per quarter, or about one farthing 

 per bushel, and I know that with the common Cornish 

 boiler, and noncondensing high-pressure engines, the 

 ordinary fuel for grinding is only one penny per bushel. 

 How the increased population of this country could be 

 fed, had we to depend on wind, water, or horses, 

 is beyond my comprehension. We see, in fact, that 

 almost everywhere a steam-engine is attached to the 

 wind or water-mill, and, in addition, we have great 

 steam-mills at many of the railway stations. Consider- 

 ing that a vast number of steam-engines are worked 

 night and day, it may be fairly estimated that one horse- 

 power worked twenty-four hours is equal to the labour 

 of six real horses for the same period. Take an Atlantic 

 steamer, that steams unceasingly night and day, and 

 suppose her power to be one thousand steam horse, 

 you would require six thousand real horses to do the 

 work ! ! To imagine what space so many animals 

 would require, their food, water, attendants, bedding, 

 harness, and shoeing, seems an impossible absurdity, 

 and yet, practically, when a farmer uses a horse where 

 he might use steam, he is in an equally ludicrous and 

 unprofitable embarrassment. This brings me to the con- 

 clusion — 



On how Small a Farm will a Steam-engine 



PAY, AND WHAT HAS A StEAM-ENGINE TO DO ON A 



Farm ? — When I speak of the general application of 

 steam-power in agriculture, I assume an improved and 

 profitable condition of agriculture, very different from 

 that which unfortunately generally exists ; but let me 

 take a well-regulated and a well-drained farm of two 

 hundred acres or less, making five score of meat per 

 acre (I make more than ten score, the labourer makes 

 thirty-two score), there will be plenty to do to grind 

 corn, crush oats, break rape-cake, cut and steam chaff, 



thrash and dress corn, pump water, and, if opportunity 

 oft'ers, work irrigation pumps ; and if you add to this the 

 cultivation of the soil, an eight-liorse-power engine will 

 not have many holidays. It is a great convenience to 

 your neighbours to send in their corn to you, to be ground. 

 I find that in this way the money I receive in grinding for 

 others pays for all my coals, so that my engine only 

 costs the wear-and-tear and attendance, and still does 

 all my work, irrigation included. Since harvest I have 

 ground more than three hundred quarters of corn for my 

 pigs. When your engine rests it eats nothing. I find 

 that by treading down the chaff, cake, &c., when 

 steamed, and thus preventing the access ofair, itwill 

 keep sweet and hot for a week or more, according to the 

 bulk of the mass, and the animals like it better. On 

 a farm of two hundred acres there ought to be at least 

 two hundred tons of straw, to cut into chaff, and to be 

 steamed by the waste steam from the engine. The 

 time will come when we shall warm our bullock-sheds 

 with steam in cold weather, as the manufacturers warm 

 their mills, and in summer it would pay well to drive 

 a circulation of air by a fanner through the cattle- 

 houses, and not a fly will be seen there, nor any disease. 

 There is no doubt that during summer much beef could 

 be and should be made by bullocks comfortably warm, 

 untormented by flies or excess of sunshine ; but then 

 all this implies a manufacturing adaptation of means to 

 an end, which will involve a system of intelligent re- 

 construction in our farmeries. All this will come when 

 our doubled or tripled population will demand twice 

 or three times the amount of meat now produced on our 

 little island. 



Steam on Small Farms. — There is no reason why 

 small farmers should be deprived of the benefits of steam 

 cultivation ; already some spirited individuals in our 

 district, who are owners of nearly a score of steara. 

 engines, execute the thrashing and Fowler's plough- 

 draining over an extensive district, at a fixed price per 

 acre, and I know that they are about to carry out steam 

 cultivation on the same terms. 



Gain in Time and Opportunitv by Steam- 

 culture. — Although, irrespective of the above consi- 

 deration, steam is much cheaper than horse-power, the 

 question of cost becomes insignificant in comparison 

 with opportunity. Nothing can illustrate this better 

 than the words of Mr. Smith, of Woolston, in one of his 

 recent letters on the use of his steam-cultivator. lie 

 says : " I have shown that two hundred and twenty-five 

 acres of heavy clay require the work of an eight-horse 

 power engine forty-five days. I find from practice it 

 would require thirty-five horses to perform this work in 

 the same time, i. e., five horses for three hundred and 

 fifteen days, the whole of a year ; this, of cour-e, does 

 not include what can be done by the apparatus i;i the 

 spring and summer." In other words, as a farmer of 

 two hundred and twenty-five acres would only have 

 eight or nine horses, three-fourths of his stubble-land 

 would be unbroken during the forty-five fine days of 

 August, September, and October. It is only the 

 chemist of agriculture who can sufiiciently appreciate 

 the enormity of this loss of aeration, evaporation, filtia- 



