386 



SCIENCE OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part II. 



2550. The only essential machine of this class is the hoe plough of Wilkie ; or any 

 other similar one. 



Sbct. II. Of Machines for Sowing and Planting. 



2551. Machines for sowing or planting in roivs, are very various and often too compli. 

 cated. Harte says, the first u. 

 drill machine was invented by a ^ i 

 German, and presented to the 

 court of Spain in 1647 ; but it 

 appears, from a communication 

 to the Board of Agriculture, 

 that a sort of rude drill or 

 drill plough has been in use 

 in India from time immemo- 

 rial. Their use is to deposit 

 the seed in equidistant rows 

 on a flat surface; on the 

 top of a narrow ridge ; in 

 the interval between two 

 ridges ; or in the bottom of 

 a common furrow. Corn 

 when drilled is usually sown 

 in the first of these ways; 

 turnips in the second; and 

 peas and beans in the third 

 and fourth. The practice 

 of drilling corn does not 

 however seem to be gaining ground, and even where it is found of advantage to have 



the plants rise in parallel rows, this is some- 

 times done by means of what is called ribbing, a 

 process more convenient in many caseis than 

 sowing with a drilling machine. 



2552. Of com drills, Cooke's improved 

 drill and horse-hoe (fg. 311.) though not the 

 most fashionable, is one of the most useful 

 implements of this kind on light dry soils, even 

 surfaces, and in dry climates. It has been 

 much used in Norfolk and Suffolk, and many 

 other parts of England. The advantages of this 

 machine are said to consist; 1. In the wheels 

 being so large that the machine can travel on 

 any road without trouble or danger of breaking ; also from the farm to the field, &c. 

 without taking to pieces. 2. In the coulter-beam (a), with all the coulters, moving with 

 great ease, on the principle of the pentagraph, to the right or left, so as to counteract the 

 irregularity of the horse's draught, by which means the drills may be made straight : and 

 where lands or ridges are made four and a half, or nine and a half feet wide, the horse 

 may always go in the furrow, without setting a foot on the land, either in drilling or 

 horse-hoeing. 3. In the seed supplying itself regularly, without any attention, from 

 the upper to the lower boxes as it is distributed. 4. In lifting the pin on the coulter- 

 beam to a hook on the axis of the wheels ; by which means the coulters are kept out of 

 the ground at the end of the land, without the least labor or fatigue to the person who 

 attends the machine. 5. In going up or down steep hills, in the seed-box being elevated 

 or depressed accordingly, so as to render the 

 distribution of the seed regular; and the 

 seed being covered by a lid, and thus screened 

 from wind or rain. The same machine is 

 easily transformed into a cultivator, horse- 

 hoe (^g. 3 12.), scarifier, or grubber, all which 

 operations it encounters exceedingly well; 

 and by substituting a corn-rake, stuble-rake, 

 or quitch-rake, for the beam of coulters, or 

 hoes (a), it will rake corn-stubbles, or clean 

 lands of root weeds. When corn is to be sown 

 in rows, and the intervals hoed or stirred, we 

 know of no machine superior to this one, and 

 from being long in a course of manufacture, 

 few can be made so cheap. But these ad- 

 vantages, though considerable in the process 



