On the Cost of Horse-power. 439 



but his experience can be recorded with equal accuracy, and, 

 when extended over a sufficient length of time, will furnish data 

 for as detailed a calculation. 



But an attempt to define more accurately the experience of the 

 agriculturist on this subject would be useful independently of 

 its enabling a just comparison of the cost of horse-power with 

 that of steam. It would tend to the more general adoption of 

 the best methods of horse management. Something of the kind 

 has, indeed, already happened. Thus, in the earlier days of 

 the competition in agricultural steam-engines, their differences 

 of cost per unit of the power produced exceeded 100 per cent. 

 Their consumption of coal per horse for every such unit thus 

 produced varied at Carlisle from 3'698 up to 10. At Chester, 

 after three years' competition, most of them had much more 

 nearly approached the best upon the list. Now, the earliest 

 allusion in this Journal to the cost of horse-labour is in 

 the first of those admirable pictures of English agriculture 

 (vol. i.) drawn by Mr. Pusey. He there stated (p. 19), on the 

 authority of the Harleston farmers' club, that amongst a body of 

 farmers all residing within four or five miles of that place, all 

 using a similar breed of horses, and all cultivating a similar 

 description of land, a difference in the expense of maintaining 

 their cart-horses existed, amounting in authenticated statements 

 to upwards of 50 per cent., whether estimated at per head for 

 each cart-horse, or per acre for the arable land. It is impossible 

 with systems of general management, as it is with methods of 

 constructing and of feeding steam-engines, to bring the influence 

 of public and immediate competition to bear on their improve- 

 ment ; but some of the effects of this competition may, perhaps, 

 be produced by the mere publication of existing differences ; and 

 whether or not these differences are now as great as they were at 

 Harleston twenty years ago, at any rate the publication now 

 attempted of some of the methods prevalent in this country of 

 managing the horses of the farm must have a useful tendency. 



The materials before me for such a comparison as thus appears 

 desirable consist of — 1. The published estimates of such men as 

 Professor Low in his works on Agriculture and Landed Property, 

 Henry Stephens in his ' Book of the Farm,' and Robert Baker in 

 the last edition of Bayldon's 'Art of Valuing Rents and Tillage.' 



2. The published discussions of this subject before the 

 Highland and Agricultural Society (Feb. 1850), the London 

 Farmers' Club (June 1850, April 1853), the Botley, Darlington, 

 Gloucester, Harleston, Newcastle, Witham, and other farmers' 

 clubs, at various times. 



3. The published practice and experience of various individual 

 agriculturists given in the first volume of this Journal — in Bacon's 



