322 Report on the Exhibition and Trial of Implements 



Ricketts' Cultivator, showing cultivating shaft ready for work. 



sideration, especially by those who think a locomotive preferable to a fixed 

 traction power, and a rotary to a horizontal rectilinear motion. The engine 

 was of the ordinary locomotive construction, with double cylinders and re- 

 ducing gear- work for driving one of the carrying wheels. It was steered by 

 the fore-carriage, and three men were required when at work in the field. The 

 principle of action in this cultivator is a horizontal transverse shaft, driven by 

 an endless pitch chain from a pinion on the crank shaft, attached to the hind 

 part of the engine, and revolving in radial links at a small elevation above the 

 ground. The axis of this transverse shaft (on which several difiFerent forms of 

 cutters were fixed according to the nature of the work required) is parallel to 

 that of the engine wheels, but a contrary motion is given to it, so that the cut 

 or passage of the implement through the soil is with the direction of the 

 engine's progressive motion. 



By this arrangement the cutters enter the soil or furrow from below, and, 

 working upwards to the surface, carry with them the separated pieces, and 

 drop them, as their revolution is continued, in an inverted position. This is a 

 new principle of action in rotary cultivation : it substitutes a tearing for a com- 

 pressing force in dividing the soil, and completes the inversion of the separated 

 pieces by moving through half a revolution (or an angle of 180°) instead of 

 three-quarters of a revolution (or an angle of 270°), which is required by the 

 ordinary mode of applying rotating cultivators. 



