STEAM CULTIVATION. 459 



and my average consumption of coal per acre is much less, 

 than it has ever been before. This is mainly due to my 

 land having been deeply worked so many times before. 



" The sum total of till this evidence proves plainly that the 

 Woolston system of applying steam-power to the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil gives clean dress and cheap seed-beds, and 

 that fancy tackle is not needed on show days. The boy 

 that you see working the implement is only 14 years old. 

 He has done all my work this year, and well too. The 

 work is before you to speak for itself." 



It is found, for use in neighborhoods where the farms 

 are small, that it is the best plan to form joint-stock com- 

 panies to own and operate the tackle hiring it out by the 

 day or by the acre, and giving the precedence to stock- 

 holders. This plan would work the best among the smaller 

 farmers of our Eastern States but at the West, where the 

 proprietorships are larger, it will be most advantageous to 

 have the apparatus, with its engine to do other work, at- 

 tached to the farm. 



It is sometimes objected that much of the land in this 

 country is too rough and too stony for the steam-plough 

 ever to gain a foothold. The same objection was made twenty 

 years ago to the use of the mowing machine in New Eng- 

 land, and there is every reason to suppose that when the 

 advantages of the steam-plough are once fully realized, even 

 the hillsides of Vermont will smile under its influence. 



