.')28 Report o)i Steam Cultivation. [Claeke. 



Mr. Hope met us at Drem Station, on Saturday morning, 

 November 17tli, our first call being upon 



No. 1)5. Mr. Thomas Begbie, of Queenston Bank, Drem, 

 Haddingtonshire, who has worked a 14-horse Fowler engine 

 since 1862. His farm is on the trap rock ; the soil partly light, 

 but portions making heavy pair-horse ploughing. He uses the 

 6-feet cultivator for autumn and spring tillage ; does all the 

 heavy work for turnips, and prepares some of the seed-furrows 

 for wheat, by the steam tackle. The main advantages found are 

 in the greater expedition and the increased depth of the work, as 

 compared with horse-ploughing and grubbing. Mr. Begbie 

 considers that his root crops show a considerable augmentation 

 of produce, though he has not tested steam against horse work 

 in the same field. One palpable result has been attained — the 

 displacement of one-fourth his former number of farm-horses. 



Our next call was upon 



No. 96. Mr. William Sadler, of Ferrygate, Dirleton, near 

 Drem, Haddingtonshire. Eastward of Drem, and not far from 

 the new " watering-place " of North Berwick, Mr. Sadler occupies 

 409 acres of arable mixed soil, lying in 50 and 60-acre fields, on 

 a gentle rise of bleak un wooded country, which looks northward 

 over the Avide Firth of Forth. 



A Fowler 10-horse engine Avas tried here in 1862, but, wanting 

 in power, was changed for a 12-horse engine, which has done all 

 the heavy work for roots, and also ploughed the land for wheat, 

 barley, and other crops. And now the big boulder-stones have 

 been got out, Mr. Sadler finds that he can accomplish his steam 

 tillage for much less than the price that horse-work used to cost, and 

 his former force of 14 horses has been reduced to 9 ; a fact from 

 such a place and from such an authority as should tell more in 

 favour of steam culture than a dozen reports from ordinary prac- 

 titioners. We walked over some magnificent tilths, torn up 12 or 

 14 inches deep ; and when Mr. Sadler declared to us that not 

 only was his tillage-expenditure so much less than formerly (and 

 this, remember, under the best Lothian management of teams 

 which has become proverbial for its exactness and rigid economy 

 in every detail), his crops were also better, we could readily 

 recognise the correctness of his judgment on this point ; for we 

 never beheld more wonderful swedes and hybrid turnips than 

 those which, in huge bulbs for hundreds of yards together along 

 the rows, had just been pronounced by a local Society's official 

 judges to weigh 30 to 36 terns per acre. 



Another important circumstance is that Mr. Sadler, feeling 

 the loss of time involved in taking-up and setting-down the 

 anchor, and the difficulty of the action of the " slack-gear " in 

 fields not perfectly rectangular, has purchased a " double-engine 



