Wet Season of 1S72 on Steam- Cultivation. 197 



bed was similar to that in 1871, costino^ only 6a\ 2d. per acre. 

 The produce was 51 bushels, thus showing that the wet year 

 reduced the produce a little. The ridges were hand-picked 

 yearly at a trifling cost, and although it had gone through the 

 two wet years, as well as its heavy cropping, it was so clean 

 that it had nothing but a ploughing over with horses for roots 

 this year, which had 8 cwt. of superphosphate per acre (and a 

 part of it, by way of experiment, a little sulphate of ammonia, 

 which, for what I could see, did but little or no good). The 

 crop is a heavy one, particularly the portion of kohl-rabi. About 

 one-third part of the crop will be drawn off, and the rest fed on 

 with a lot of corn and cake, &c. Not a shovelful of cart-dung 

 has been used during the whole of these years, all the straw 

 having gone off; this shows plainly what steam cultivation can 

 do on good land, be the seasons wet or fine. 



" The evidences contained in the above are that by the aid of 

 steam-power, heavy clay-land can be worked 10 inches deep, 

 and kept clean, at a cost of 10^. per acre a year for 19 years, 

 under a system of corn cropping during the whole period, taking 

 wet and dry years as they come ; and that clay-land out of con- 

 dition may be bought, kept under corn cropping, and made 

 clean in six years, at a cost of about 10.9. per acre, excepting the 

 hand-picking ; and also that good land may be as successfully 

 treated, especially so fen land in character, which may be made 

 to grow six white straw crops in succession, the two last years wet 

 ones, and at the end turned up clean for roots at a single horse 

 ploughing, while two wet years drive the best of our horse 

 farmers to a dead fallow, and others to a dead fallow two years 

 in succession, while filthy land rules throughout the country — I 

 hear the latter from all quarters. 



" Steam-power properly applied makes the farmer master of his 

 position in all seasons. I am now buying London dung, because 

 the canal passes through my farm within 100 yards of my heavy 

 land, taking away the wheat-straw and bringing back manure. 

 I am quite certain that a deep and clean working of the land 

 with a liberal mixture of manure of any kind, according to cir- 

 cumstances and judgment, would give good results ; but one 

 thing must be remembered, all the steam-power work must be 

 <lone in the autumn, therefore farmers must have tackle of their 

 own ; the contract system cannot do it, for the contractor to make 

 it pay must work many months in the year." 



Not many farmers of clay-land can give as satisfactory an 

 account of their experience during the wet seasons as Mr. 

 Smith does. Two points in which his practice differs from the 

 usual routine of farm-work seem mainly to have secured his 

 success. The systematic hand-picking of weeds continued for 

 many years has rendered his farm so clean that there are few 



