at the Sa-lishuvTj Meeting, 1857. 419 



rate a feeling, in the mind of a really experienced judge, more 

 akin to fear than to hope. Strange indeed would have been 

 the apparition of one of those highly-finished and compli- 

 cated-looking instruments to the eye of the great Experimen- 

 talist, whose homely description of his first idea of an inven- 

 tion now so elaborately matured, they bring to mind with all the 

 force of contrast. " To that purpose " (the securing himself from 

 the inteidioned irregularity of hand-sowing by his men) " I exa- 

 mined and compared all the mechanical ideas that ever had 

 entered my imagination, and at last pitched upon the groove, 

 tongue, and spring in the sound-board of an organ. With these 

 a little altered, and some parts of two other instruments " (what 

 were they ?)" added to them, as foreign to the field as an organ 

 is, I composed my machine. It was named a Drill, because, 

 when farmers sowed their heans and pease into channels and 

 furrows by hand, they called that action " (in allusion to military 

 order) " drilling." So that, after all, the deaf old gentleman who 

 repaid an exhausting explanation of the virtues of the " last new 

 and improved" implement in this class with the exclamation, 

 " Very ingenious, very ! — and, pray, how many tunes does it 

 plajj ? " would have astonished Jethro Tull, the inventor, con- 

 siderably less than Mr. Hornsby the improver. The well-conceived 

 substitution of caoutchouc instead of tin pipes, by Mr. Hornsby, 

 has added an improvement that will be appreciated by all lovers 

 of harmony, whether of sound or action. There is still room 

 for a very saleable implement in this class on a scale smaller 

 than that called the ' small-occupation drill.' That it would 

 not be a really economical implement is true, but it would not 

 on this account be less appropriate, since the class of holdings 

 to which it would apply is not susceptible of the highest 

 economy in implements, as in other respects. 



The dry-manure Distributors furnished one of the most inter- 

 esting trials of the whole meeting. Whoever has witnessed the 

 effect of hand-sowing guano on a dry windy March day will not 

 refuse the epithet humane as well as economical to these inven- 

 tions. Chambers, Holmes, and Reeves, at the descending scale 

 of 20 guineas, 14/., and 10/., are the names and the corresponding 

 pi'ices that offer themselves ; that of Messrs. Reeves, at the lowest 

 sum, being introduced first to the Society at this meeting. The 

 machinery of the two dearer ones is most ingenious, and almost 

 inevitably exact in their low, equable, and steady delivery of the 

 manure, whether damp or powdery. But Messrs. Reeves's lower- 

 priced instrument, which seems as effective as it is simple, is a 

 positive boon to the labourer as well as the farmer ; for, in a matter 

 of this kind, a low price decides a question which han^ in conflict 

 in many minds — " to buy or not to buy," — virtually stoppino- the 



