Clarke.] Report on Steam Cultivation. 199 



As far as our part of the enterprise was concerned (that is, in 

 visiting and reporting upon selected " steam-farms " in the nine- 

 teen counties named above), we felt that every idea of a com- 

 petitive nature was foreign to our purpose ; we travelled some 

 thousands of miles by rail, by road, and on foot, not to draw 

 comparisons between this " set of tackle " and that, but to witness 

 and examine, on behalf of the Society's Council and Members, 

 what steam tillage is actually doing for the farmer under a great 

 variety of circumstances — to describe what we ourselves observed, 

 to collect statistical information on which we considered that we 

 could rely, and to note results communicated to us in good faith, 

 leaving every reader to draw his own conclusions from the facts 

 related, as to which particular piece of machinery (if any) will be 

 best adapted to his own case. Still, if we properly appreciated 

 what Ave saw, and were discreet in the use of our materials, we 

 should be enabled to point out the respective advantages and 

 deficiencies pertaining to the several "systems ;" to compare the 

 " one-engine " and " two-engine " arrangements for different pur- 

 poses, to offer an opinion upon the merits of individuals or joint- 

 proprietorship of apparatus, and of contract-working and letting- 

 out by private owners or companies ; and in general we should 

 be in a position to say why it is that adopters of steam culture 

 have been counted by a few hundreds, instead of being found 

 scattered through the length and breadth of our country by 

 thousands. 



To narrate the incidents of our many journeys through districts 

 of widely-differing features in landscape and husbandry, would 

 be only an abortive attempt at rendering dry details readable, 

 besides absorbing too much space in the closely-packed pages of 

 the Journal : therefore we plunge at once into facts and figures ; 

 and the reader who has not the patience to wade through all, can 

 content himself with making use of the " concluding references " 

 at the end of each Section. We purposely avoid the perhaps too 

 customary generalization of statistics in tabular forms, giving 

 "aveiage" items of expense, "average" performance per day or 

 year, " average " number of horses displaced, and so on. For 

 certain purposes, wholesale deductions of this kind may be valu- 

 able ; but our investigation has been essentially of a more retail 

 character. We have sought to ascertain what steam tillage is 

 doing upon each particular farm where we found it : the outlay, 

 the working, the results may tell better or worse on that farm 

 than on another ; but they concern that farm alone, and are 

 accounted for, commented on, justified or condemned, by the 

 special conditions and circumstances surrounding that particular 

 case. The details of cost and profit, of suitability of the ma- 

 chinery employed, of effects upon the soil and the cropping, will 



