Clakke.] Report on Steam Cultivation, 331 



Section III. — Partnership. 



Under this head we class examples of the joint-ownership of 

 apparatus by two or more farmers, excluding partnerships and 

 companies which merely "let out" or undertake work by con- 

 tract. And we take, first, those cases in which two persons 

 unite in the proprietorship and use of one set of tackle. 



No. 98. Mr. Newton, of Campsfield Farm, Kidlington, near 

 Woodstock, Oxfordshire, occupying over 500 acres arable, under 

 the Duke of Marlborough, and 



No. 99. Mr. Thomas Taylor, of Shipton-on-Churwell, occu- 

 pying the adjoining farm of 750 acres arable, are co-partners in a 

 steam-plough tackle. This is one of Fowler's separate-windlass 

 sets (on Eddington's principle), in which a 10-horse power Lin- 

 coln portable is run bodily up (road-wheels included) on to the 

 top of a carriage-frame, within which is a clip-drum driven by 

 gear-work and an endless block-chain (in place of a belt) from a 

 V-grooved rigger on the engine crank-shaft. Hauling the engine 

 up incline-beams by means of the wire-rope and gearing of the 

 windlass-frame, or again lowering it to the ground, takes half an 

 hour : the whole affair, when the engine is mounted, being self- 

 travelling. There is a self-travelling anchorage, with the rope 

 and implement, porters, Sic., as in other Leeds tackle ; and 

 removing the whole occupies four horses about two hours. 



The greater portion of the two farms consists of stone-brash 

 land ; not very light, but loam containing such an admixture of 

 lime and clay as to be sticky, never keeping plough mould- 

 boards bright except when thoroughly dry, — or as it is termed 

 here, " drought-rotten." It is heavyish pair-horse ploughing ; 

 or, as a man expressed it in the forceful but unsmoothed Saxon 

 of the locality, " turnin over an acre a day gives tew bosses a 

 deuce of a buckin." A staple six inches deep, in some places 

 deeper, lies directly upon the rock, — or rather, upon the thin 

 " kale " stones or rubble (" brash "), which are brought up in 

 plenty by the deep-searching tines of the cultivator. The con- 

 sequence of this " breaking of the pan " is that water gets down 

 much more quickly ; the drainage has been made perfect (though 

 it is not the whole of the land that is well-drained). And again, 

 as we should naturally expect, the horse implements work much 

 more easily. The only steam implement used is the 7-tined 

 balance cultivator; with which the 10-horse engine can do 12 

 acres a day, at 8 or 9-inch depth, — though it is to be noted that 

 this depth was not attained the first year. As an average day's 

 work, including removals, 9 acres will be near the mark ; a good 

 long day's work is 10 to 12 acres, but occasionally a stoppage 

 may occur, and only 4 acres may be done. The greatest area 



