306 Report on Steam Cultivation. [Claeke. 



nate year. The land drains better ; lie never before got such 

 fine tilths for turnips, and they can be fed-off with greater 

 advantage. He says also that his grain-crops have been greatly 

 more productive — " I think I can afford wheat and barley at 5s. 

 per quarter less by steam than on the old system." Both Mr. 

 Strickland and his son are extremely practical people, but as 

 enthusiastic about steam-husbandry as they are over their young 

 cart and other stallions ; in fact, the father said, " I am an old 

 man, but 1 would give Lord Headley notice to quit if I might 

 not or could not have a steam-plough." Readers may, in perusing 

 our account of this farm, make allowance for this warmth of 

 feeling ; but the following is Mr. Strickland's statement of his 

 gain in the displacement of horse-flesh. He used to keep 14 

 farm-horses, now he has only 8 ; these teams, v/ith the help of 

 two or three young ones in harvest, cart all the corn, do all the 

 light tillage, lead-out manure for the potato-crop — the turnips 

 (and sometimes the seeds) being only " artificialled " — and last 

 year these 8 horses likewise carried the produce of 64 acres of 

 potatoes to Leeds, 11 miles off, bringing back night-soil, or slack 

 or coal from the pits. Before the steam-engine was introduced, 

 although he had 14 horses, he was obliged to hire teams, or rather 

 to have all this potato carriage done by contract, paying the men 

 10^. a ton ; so that in the mere delivery of one year's potato-crop 

 to market he saves no less a sum than 200/. In addition to this, 

 of course, there is the yearly saving from the banishment of 

 6 horses by the steam-engine, amounting to 264/., — making a total 

 of 464/. a year, out of which has to be defrayed the cost of the 

 average annual performance of about 273 acres of very deep tillage. 

 No. 89. Mr. Henry Hawking, of Ellinthorpe, near Boro- 

 bridge. North Riding of Yorkshire, occupies 225 acres of arable, 

 and 115 acres of old pasture, under " Her Majesty," and has 

 also about 190 acres arable on another farm, 7 or 8 miles 

 away, at Tholthorpe, near Easingwold. A 14-horse Fowler 

 "set" does some cultivating on the ofF-farm, after harvest, 

 but is mainly employed at Ellinthorpe, doing all the heavy 

 tillage here, so that the 225 acres may be considered as the 

 farm under steam cultivation. About two-thirds of it consist 

 of a loam, upon "a good strong" subsoil, having sand at a 

 very considerable depth below — this heavy subsoil containing 

 small nodules of stone ; in fact it is a drift deposit, and 

 its surface undulates very slightly at a level, perhaps 10 or 

 20 feet higher than that of the horizontal warp clay of the 

 Ure, which is a heavier soil, occupying the other third of 

 the farm. Under-drainage at 5 feet depth, and 8 or 9-yard 

 intervals, has only just been finished, a portion having been 

 done each year : the land is ploughed quite flat, and drains 



