Clarke.] Report on Steam Cultivation. 325 



the underdrainage not quite finished) ; and his 28 horses, no 

 longer requiring to be so highly kept, are now fed on wheat- 

 straw and bruised oats. We saw them in the best cart-horse 

 stables we have met with, fitted with racks, and slab bottomed 

 mangers, with ample air space overhead, and a 3-jards-wide walk 

 behind the horse's tails. 



A Fowler plough having been tried here in 1862, led Mr. 

 Wright to proceed vigorously with the work he had already 

 begun, of preparing for steam tackle of his own, by clearing 

 away fences and a few bits of old copse, full of vermin, striking 

 out new roads, and making his fields to average 40 and 50 acres 

 each, some of them being 80 acres in extent. And this he was 

 enabled to effect, with the consent and co-operation of an ex- 

 ceedingly good landlord, A Fowler 14-horse set, with anchorage, 

 4-furrovv plough, and 7-tined cultivator, was bought in July, 

 18G4, costing 950/, " Additions " have cost 30/, ; and repairs, 

 partly from breakage, and partly from tear and wear, have 

 amounted, in all, to about 20/. per annum. Two years of solid 

 work have thus involved no " expense " of consequence, and 

 none of the rope has yet been replaced, — they have had more 

 trouble with the " eyes " of the rope than with anything else. 

 This unusual economy in the wear of rope may be accounted for 

 partly by its being of peculiarly hard steel (for vt^ire-ropes vary 

 much in quality), and partly from the circumstance of its being 

 in thoroughly business-like hands. For, seeing the tackle at 

 Avork, we observed that the portering was extremely well done 

 by 3 boys, the rope held completely off the ground and not care- 

 lessly suffered to grind diagonally over the porter friction-rollers. 

 The rope appeared to be nearly "half-worn," and this after 1500 

 acres of work, every bit of it deep and heavy tillage. We 

 noticed that the hands (who are all ordinary farm -labourers, at 

 other times employed in the common details of the farm), have 

 arrived at such smartness of procedure, that the time lost in 

 turning the plough was only 20 seconds at the anchor end, and 

 oO seconds at the engine end, the driver firing and looking 

 sharp round at the same time. The trouble which some parties 

 have met with from the " slack-gear " on the implement, has not 

 been found here, partly owing to the absence of land-fast stones, 

 (indeed there are few stones of any kind,) which generally cause 

 most of the mischief. Mr. Wright is quite satisfied with the 

 single-engine system, as the slack-gear allows for variations of 

 20 or more yards' length of furrow in a field, without stopping to 

 add or take off sections of rope, and the anchorage headland is 

 scarcely injured. The engine headland, however, is in bad plight, 

 and has to be ploughed up by a 3-horse team, when it is not a grass 

 road or a hard metal road, as in the majority of cases it is on 



