Clarke.] Report on Steam Cultivation. 369 



wretched ; the turnips very Lad and weedy ; the corn crops 

 poor : though the ground, in general, was not particularly foul. 

 This we felt to be an instance of farming under difficulties, — a 

 more liberal use of capital being required on a holding, that, we 

 learned, had been cursed with a bad name for generations. Is 

 it likely that steam cultivation could earn any credit under such 

 circumstances ? 



We have found on a large farm an efficient steam-plough 

 regularly worked for years in association with a monstrous 

 growth of couch on heavy soil, for which no excessive wetness of 

 the climate presented an excuse, and with any amount of in- 

 attention to thistles and charlock. On that farm we saw (in 

 September) a field of two-years old seeds which had been " Ben- 

 tailed " by horses both ways, foul with grass "from the wet," 

 and then waiting " to be burnt." Here, certainly, was a poor 

 specimen of the advantage of keeping an expensive piece of 

 steam-power, which, if of use at all, ought to have tilled and 

 cleaned precisely such a field as this. 



We have visited an estate farmed by an agriculturist of some 

 eminence, in whose hands the steam-plough might be expected 

 to shine to advantage, — seeing that there was not the least sign 

 of lack of capital. There was, obviously enough, a want of 

 judgment in the general tillage management of this medium-soil 

 and clay, as well as a want of appreciation of what might be 

 done by the apparatus. The green crops were of moderate 

 quality, most of the so-called "dead" fallows were green and 

 lively with couch and worse grasses, and many of the stubbles were 

 foul. "No wonder," we thought, " if steam tillage extends very 

 slowly, when it has to be answerable for such bad management as 

 this, in the very circumstances where everybody looks for all the 

 results that large farming and abundant resources can realize." 



In other cases we have found too much (rather than the more 

 common "too little") demanded of the steam-plough. Sinking 

 men have made a desperate venture upon a costly machine that 

 was to retrieve the condition of their farms, and, as it were, 

 manure the land, stock the land, and do everything else, besides 

 merely cheapening, expediting, and improving the mechanical 

 operations of tillage : the apparatus, being unable to fulfil these 

 delusive hopes, has not raised the prospects of such unfortunate 

 people, and steam culture comes in for blame really attaching to 

 general impoverishment. 



It is no compliment to a steam-cultivator for its owner to keep 

 it shut-up for two or three years, from a merely local or perhaps 

 personal cause. Yet we know farms where this is the case : one 

 farmer telling you that he liked the steam-tackle uncommonly 

 well, but has not cared to apply himself to its management since 



VOL. III. — S. S. " 2 B 



