THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



249 



ON THE RE-FORMATION AND RE-CONSTRUCTION OF FENCES 



ON THE TILLAGE FARM. 



The Size and Form or Field most suitable to the EcoNOiiic uot of Steam-powek, 



STATIONARY OR LOCOMOTIVE, DEMONSTRATED. 



Within the last few years various able and instructive 

 disquisitions have been presented to the agricultural 

 public, demonstrative both of the practicability and the 

 economy of steam as a motive power in the traction of 

 tillage implements, in place of animal strength. In all 

 these, however, the fitness of the land for the thrifty 

 appliance of this agency, as respects the laying out of 

 the fields, has been assumed. Indeed, in all the instances 

 on which the arguments in favour of this proposed sub- 

 stitution are based, the circumstances of the experimental 

 areas were sufficiently well-adapted for a fair trial and 

 exhibition of the power of steam as an agent in field 

 cultivation ; and hitherto no special attention has been 

 directed on the unpropitious statistical fact, that a vast 

 majority of the existing tillage enclosures of England are 

 all but absolutely disqualified, by reason of inadequate 

 size and irregular form, for the reception of steam agency 

 in their culture. In a former paper, we set forth reasons 

 showing that to obtain the fullest amount of work out 

 of the animals labouring in the tillage field, the en- 

 closure ought to approach in form, as near as circum- 

 stances will allow, to that of a parallelogram or oblong, 

 whose greater axis crosses the strike of the furrows at or 

 near a right-angle, and to contain an area not greatly 

 under nor much above twenty-five square acres. It was 

 added, in concluding the argument, that this specifica- 

 tion of shape and magnitude was in substantial accord- 

 ance with the practical principles on which the use of 

 steam as a motive power in working the soil can to 

 best advantage be employed. 



This assertion we will now proceed to verify ; pre- 

 mising first, that when the various mechanical plans pro- 

 posed for carrying out steam-tillage are examined and 

 classified, they may be arranged thus : Ist, Into those 

 in which the engine is absolutely stationary, whilst the 

 process of cultivation is under its impulse, as in the 

 Woolston method. Or where a minor amount of locomo- 

 tion is given to the machine, as in Fowler's contrivance, 

 in which a slow motion along the line of the h^ad-ridge 

 on which it is placed gives to the plough, furrow by fur- 

 row, its lateral progress across the field. In both of 

 these inventions, the tillage implement, as is well- 

 known, is dragged through the soil by means of dif- 

 ferently arranged wire-ropes, which, as shown in the 

 Woolston method, may be intermediately deflected from 

 straight lines by means of pulleys or sheaves anchored 

 in the ground, but which ultimately must be adjusted 

 80 as lo draw the attached instrument in successive 

 parallel and collateral straight lines, in like manner as 

 is done in ordinary ploughing. In other woids, al- 

 though it is true, that the formation of bent ridges or 



furrows, in order to run equidistant with all the devia- 

 tions of an irregular fence, may be done by means of 

 animal draught (but with a greater or less sacrifice of 

 time and labour coequal with the greater or less amount 

 of deflection), it is no less true that neither the Wool- 

 ston nor Fowler's apparatus is capable of drawing the 

 tillage implement itself in any direction save that of 

 straight lines, from one end of the field to the other. 



The second class of cultivating steam engines are es- 

 sentially locomotive in their constitution, either dragging 

 an attached implement of tillage in their train as in ani- 

 mal traction, and as exemplified in Boydell's well-known 

 contrivance, or having rotary diggers constructed on the 

 after-part of the machine itself, these being moved around 

 their axis with greater or less speed contemporaneously 

 with a slower forward motion of the entire apparatus 

 effected by broad driving wheels acting on the surface of 

 the ground. This is the principle of Rickett's patent. 



The third and only other species of invention which it 

 is necessary lo allude to is Halkett's. Like the last 

 class, it performs its work directly from the body of the 

 machine, which simultaneously impels itself forward by 

 means of driving wheels acting on light rails, each per- 

 manently embedded in the earth in the parting furrow 

 between ridge and ridge. 



Now, assuming, for the sake of argument, that all these 

 mechanical contrivances generating motive power, and of 

 communicating it to tillage instruments, possess equal 

 economic value — although, in truth, this is a much vexed 

 question — it will be found, in bestowing a little reflection 

 on the subject, that all of them are liable to a greater 

 or less loss or waste of power whilst in action, connected 

 with and arising from the conformation of the field in 

 which they may be at work. Thus Fowler's combina- 

 tion requires that a certain portion of its eff'ective 

 strength shall be employed in moving the engine itself 

 and its appurtenances (including in the number of these 

 the locomotive stay or anchor in the opposite headland)^ 

 inorder to advance the tillage instrument furrow by furrow 

 across the field ; and everyone who has studied dynamics 

 but slightly, and possesses a moderate acquaintance with 

 that part of Fowler's patent, will readily see that it in- 

 volves a no inconsiderable amount of steam agency not 

 available to the actual cultivation of the ground. Hence, 

 then, in adjusting the shape and proportions of a field 

 designed for steam culture on Fowler's plan, its proper 

 form might, at first thought, be deemed to be that of a 

 parallelogram, prolonged in the line of the ridges and 

 narrow across, whereby the space over which the en- 

 o^ine and anchor have to traverse would be reduced in 

 a degree proportionate to the difference between the 



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