420 Report on the Exhibition and Trial of Implements 



good deed by suspending it sine die. It has occurred to me in 

 the course of watching the trials, and in using one of these im- 

 plements, that a good deal of time and trouble might be saved 

 in the pounding and even mixing of what are, or have hitherto 

 been, called " hand-manures," if distributors were furnished with 

 a wire drum of the squirrel-cage or " turnspit " pattern, which 

 breaching from wheel to wheel) might revolve in a semicircular 

 wooden trough, instead of that now used, and riddle out the 

 contents, discharging at intervals, for pounding, the lumpy 

 and hardened portions of the manure which alone require it, 

 instead of, as now, submitting unnecessarily the luliole mass, both 

 fine and coarse, to the same })rocess. The mixing action would 

 have every likelihood of success, as it would be performed, in 

 fact, by a process very similar to that used in several trades where 

 mixing is required, as by tea-merchants, grocers, and others. 



The true test of merit is the thoroughly equable distribution 

 of a small quantity, two or three bushels, for instance, of valu- 

 able manure over a given acre. It is satisfactory to witness 

 the skill with which hand-sowing is performed so far as acreable 

 calculation is concerned ; but, as a t/eneral rule, the delivery per 

 square yard is apt to be very imperfect, the larger or heavier 

 lumps flying from the iiand too far, the powdery portion carried 

 perhaps in the opposite direction by the wind. The low delivery 

 of the distributors cures partially the latter defect — the former 

 entirely, in the sense at least of general impartiality ; but it is 

 remarkable that Mr. Lawes, on the experimental portion of his 

 farm, and in his comparative trials of grass manures in the 

 park at Rothamsted, reverses this, preferring hand-sowing almost 

 as a necessity, in order to avoid the irregularity in detail, i. e. 

 per square yard, of the mechanical delivery. At Salisbury the 

 distributors were tried with a very small quantity of black ashes 

 upon a light-coloured rolled surface ; and certainly the precision 

 with which the particles were left sprinkled and dusted upon 

 the ground seemed to leave nothing to wish for. Still, for 

 small experimental purposes, the hand may perhaps challenge 

 pre-eminence : fortunately the cases in which it defies the rivalry 

 of machinery are chiefly of this kind, where the substitution 

 is not of pressing or broad-scale importance. The distributor 

 exhibited by Messrs. Reeves had no index of quantity ; but this, 

 they were understood to say, would, in future, be added within 

 the price named in the catalogue. 



In the class of Horse-hoes the obtuse-angled turnip-thinner of 

 Mr. Huckvale affords a neat illustration of applied mechanical 

 truth. At the Lincoln Meeting this implement appeared with 

 the cutters' at right angles to the line of draught. It was at that 

 time pointed out to Mr. Huskinson, one of the judges, that this 



