149 

 PEOFIT OF STEAM PLOUGHING. 



The following extract of a letter from E. Lawrence, sugar planter in 

 Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, presents a very gratifying view of the 

 results of plowing with the Fowler steam plows, of the importation of 

 which an account has heretofore been given : 



In the fall of 1S67 I imported a complete set of foiu'teeu-horse power double-engine 

 steam-plowiug tackle, from Messrs. John Fowler &■ Co., of Leeds, England. Owing to 

 the very rainy and had weather in tlie fall and Avinter of 1867, our plowing ojierations 

 were very limited. Our work, however, proved very satisfactory, and the facility and 

 ease with which my laborers were enabled to handle the tackle, and the anxiety to 

 have more powerful engines for our heavy, stiff clay soils, determined me to order from 

 Messrs. Fowler & Co. a set of their twenty-horse power steam-plowing tackle, which 

 I have found to be all that was required for our heaviest work. Since then both sets 

 have been in constant u.se, plowing the lands. \Vheu employed in breaking up, with 

 the mold-board plow, they run to the depth of fifteen to twentj' inches ; and when 

 cultivating or subsoiling between the planted and ratoon cano rows, to the depth of 

 twenty to twenty-four inches. 



The first forty acres of steam-plowed lands, which were broken np in the spring 

 of 1868 and planted in corn and peas, and sugar cane in the fall of the same year, 

 gave a yield of one hundred thousand pounds dry sugar, being over twenty-five hun- 

 dred pounds, or two and one-half hogsheads, of sugar to the acre. On other steam- 

 plowed lauds, planted the following spring in cane, the result has been nearly as satis- 

 factory, and this too during a season more unpropitious for the yield of sugar than any 

 I have known for the last twenty-five years. Many of ray fields where the stand of 

 cane was equally as good, but cultivated only with horse or mule power, and receiving 

 much more labor and attention than the steam-plowed lands, did not produce more 

 than fifteen hundred pounds, or one and one-half hogshead to the acre. Therefore, my 

 experience, as you can readily perceive, fully justifies me in stating that the yield of 

 cane ujion the steam-plowed and steam-cultivated lands, and with less than half the 

 labor, will he fifty per cent, greater than can jjossibly be obtained by any other system 

 of cultivation. The advantages which will be derived from the application of steam 

 to the cultivation of the soil, in our rich and inexhaustible lands in the valleys of the 

 Mississippi, and the vast prairies of the West, so admirably adapted to steam cultiva- 

 tion, is not now within the reach of the human mind to calculate. 



The prejudices against steam-cultivating machinery luay yet for a time retard its 

 general use on this continent ; but the scarcity of, and rapidly increasing demand for 

 labor, now so sensibly felt in every section of our country, can only be supplied by the 

 introduction into general use of the steam plow. It will supersede the necessity of the 

 introduction of Chinese labor. We will then be able to supply the world with cotton, 

 bread and meat. There is no country so admirably adapted to steam cultivation as 

 ours ; and I believe the day is not far distant when the smoke of the steam plow will 

 ever be in sight of the millions of freemen who will then cultivate and inhabit our 

 vast agricultural continent. 



FARMnfG m AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAD^E. 



The Presque Isle Sunrise supplies statistics of farm products in Aroos- 

 took County, Maine, for 1869. The seventy-six farms reported show the 

 aggregate yield and value of the several products named, as follows : 



2, 990 tons of hav, at $10 per ton $29,900 



2, 790 bushels wheat, at $2 per bushel .5,580 



693 bushels corn, at $1 50 per bushel 1, 0.39 



26, 6:J1 bushels oats, at 50 cents per cushel 13, 265 



24, 731 bushels buckwheat, at 50 cents per bushel 12, 365 



573 bushels beans, at $3 per bushel 1, 719 



20, 260 bushels potatoes, at 25 cents per bushel 5, 065 



28, 531 poimds butter, at 40 cents per poimd 11, 412 



7, 190 pounds cheese, at 15 cents per pound 1, 078 



13, 500 pounds clover seed, at 25 cents per pound 4, 375 



62, 536 pounds jiork, at 15 cents per pound 9, 379 



Total 95,177 



Less paid out for labor 7, 759 



Leaving 87,417 



