Clarke.] Report on Steam Cultivation. 283 



Division 3. — South. 



No. 77. Mr. J. Allin Williams, of Baydon, Wiltshire, has 

 " had the honour" of spending- not only several but very many 

 thousands of pounds in breaking the steam-horse to field-work. 

 Indeed, he was the earliest practical experimenter in steam- 

 power husbandry ; so devoted to the cause that he turned his 

 malt-house and some other buildings into a regular farmyard 

 foundry, in which he melted iron and brass, and (as he himself 

 told us) " worked with chisel and file, till neighbours had left 

 their farms without his knowing it." Unfortunately, however, 

 Mr. Williams, clever and sanguine as he is, did not succeed in 

 making more than two of his several patented inventions of 

 ultimate practical value ; and, beyond the small royalty which he 

 receives from these, which he assigned to the late Mr. John 

 Fowler, and the improved facilities now presented by his 

 farm for the operations of steam culture, he has had no 

 return for a great deal of property sunk in the pioneering of a 

 great enterprise which other men have carried to a triumphant 

 issue. It is not for us to say how far Mr. Williams' early efforts 

 were guided by sound judgment; but we do know that, by the 

 interest they excited, a powerful impetus was given to the whole 

 question of steam tillage. 



The farm comprises 274 acres arable and 16 of grass — the 

 greater part, a very strong tenacious clay, in spots upon a chalk 

 subsoil, in other places 20 to 50 feet in depth, and without 

 springs — being naturally drained by the underlying chalk, and 

 so requiring little or no underdrainage, provided the staple is not 

 allowed to " pan." The surface is in part level, and partly pre- 

 senting very steep acclivities ; in fact, this is a lofty situation on 

 the Downs, at an altitude of 900 feet above the sea-level, and in 

 the vicinity of King Alfred's hill-stronghold the classic " White 

 Horse." The fields average about 17 acres in size; the boun- 

 daries and headlands having been altered expressly for steam 

 cultivation, so as to get them as square and paralleled-sided as 

 possible, and avoid acute-angled corners — called here " pickids" — 

 in other places "gores" or " skew tings." A good deal of this 

 has been effected by exchanges of dispersed lands made with 

 abutting proprietors ; but some of Mr. Williams' neighbours 

 have not yet agreed to meet him in nothing but straight lines. 

 These exchanges cost Mr. Williams 50/. He has filled-in no 

 fewer than 17 chalk-pits, that the plough and cultivator might 

 go through them, and has excavated 3 field-tanks. We looked into 

 one of these : it is of 6 feet diameter and 13 feet deep, in a situ- 

 ation where no water could be got except from a distance ; and it 

 is supplied from the roads, and by a few drains from the surface- 



