Clarke,] Report on Steam Cultivation. 371 



addition to one or two decently built houses, stables, «Scc.), 

 afforded by a landowner on a farm of many hundred acres arable. 



We have been surprised at the number of farmers Avho can 

 afford to be careless in their treatment of machinery which cost 

 them so many hundreds of pounds ; at the common lack 

 of a house, even on scientifically-planned and architecturally 

 eleg'ant premises, capacious enough and lofty enough, and with a 

 lock-up doorway wide enough and high enough, for the lodg- 

 ment of an engine or two, with heavy iron-work that requires 

 some elbow-room ; to say nothing of the frequent deficiency of a 

 smith's shop, properly fitted and furnished with such things as 

 ratchet-drills, tapping-irons, and other handy tools wanted in 

 manifold little jobs of home-done repair. It is hardly to be 

 believed that the major part of the farmers are negligent of that 

 important member of their apparatus — the rope ; not only in 

 deficient attention to portering in the field, but also in not pro- 

 perly dressing the rope before laying-by for the winter. We 

 have seen costly steel rope lying wet and rusting in the furrow, 

 where rainy weather interrupted the progress of the implement 

 weeks and weeks before. This is a piece of unconcern for which 

 no excuse can be found ; but, far worse than that, we believe that 

 comparatively few employers of steam-tilling machinery put 

 themselves to the slight trouble of coating the rope with a pro- 

 tective covering against rust, before laying-by for a season. A 

 noted land-agent paralleled this unthrifty appreciation of 

 economy in minor details, by the following example : he has 

 drained six thousand acres of land, finding the tiles, but 

 the tenants defraying the cost of cartage and the execution of 

 the work; yet, strange to say, they allow any amount of weed 

 or mud to seal-up the outlets, so that this agent has himself to 

 send round men to clear the drain-mouths, — the farmers, con- 

 tented that the pipes have been put in, never troubling themselves 

 even for plans of the drains, in order that they might know where 

 the outlets are. 



That steam culture is to a large extent a landlord's question 

 is very evident. An engine cannot profitably traverse the clay 

 lanes and founderous farm-roads that exist upon many estates, 

 and the tenant cannot undertake to make, at his own risk and 

 expense, such permanent improvements as sound hard roads. 

 An engine cannot work in diminutive polygonal or irregular- 

 shaped inclosures, with any of the profit which has been related 

 in the course of this Report ; and the tenant cannot undertake 

 to clear away, at his own charge, mile after mile of straggling 

 hedges and primeval copses and spinneys. Much less is it in 

 his power to effect exchanges of slices of land between his land- 

 lord and abutting proprietors, in order to get straight field- 



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