658 Chronicles of Science. | Oct., 
with the tillage of the soil, and end with the manufacture of meat; 
and Mr. Fowler’s steam-plough standing at one end of the manu- 
facture, and Mr. Cruickshank’s short-horn bull ‘Forth’ standing at the 
other end, may be thus considered to include between them its whole 
scope, extent, and range. very line upon the scale which separates 
these extremes has been well represented at this meeting, but the best 
and most numerous illustrations of the whole are those of tillage 
implements on the one hand, and short-horn stock upon the other. 
Never before has so good a collection or so thorough an examination 
of tillage implements been made, and never before have better classes 
of short-horn cattle been exhibited.” 
The principal novelty on the ground here was Mr. Fowler’s new 
plan of applying steam-power to the cultivation of the land, to which 
the judges awarded the Society’s head prize. He succeeds here in 
making two of the ordinary small threshing-engines which are every- 
where employed throughout the country,. stationed one at each end of 
the furrow where the steam-drawn plough is working, to combine their 
force upon it. The engine which the plough is leaving is pulling it 
as well as the engine which it is approaching. The wire rope is laid 
around the horizontal clip-drums underneath each engine, and its ends 
are fastened in the usual way upon the gearing of the plough in front 
of it and behind it on drums there, which, gearing into one another, 
are so arranged that any pull upon the plough by the rope in front 
resolves itself to some extent into a tightening of the rope behind it. 
This ensures that the rope is always taut around both the engine- 
drums; and the consequence is, that when both engines are at work, 
they are each pulling at the rope, and each is contributing its force to 
the line by which the plough or cultivator is being drawn. Very good 
work was made at Newcastle by Fowler’s apparatus thus employed, 
and this plan is evidently a step in advance upon the double-engine 
system which Fowler as well as Savory has hitherto adopted. 
Where two engines are employed, and only one is in use at a time, 
each must be of double power, and the waste by radiation is constant 
in the case of each, notwithstanding that each is only half its time at 
work. The fuel consumed must therefore, in such a case, be excessive. 
And there is this further advantage in the double-engine system when 
the two engines co-operate, that neighbours may combine their engines 
for work of any special difficulty, the engines being severally at the 
same time of just the right power both for threshing purposes and for 
ordinary light-land cultivation. 
We may mention, among the events of the past summer, the pub- 
lication of extremely suggestive lectures on Dairy Farming, which 
had been previously delivered before the Royal Agricultural College, 
by Mr. Harrison, C.E., of Frocester Court, Gloucestershire. In addition 
to the mere detail of good practice which these lectures describe, they 
enumerate a great many facts and develope very many ideas and sug- 
gestions well calculated to excite the attention and the thought of those 
to whom they were addressed. Among these we may mention that the 
author points out that the dairy districts are, for the most part, confined 
to those geological formations which were deposited during the existence 
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