208 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



neighborhood was nothing to brag of. These ' ploughs went not 

 far from seven inches, and did good work. 



Fowler had an arrangement for working a common eight 

 horse-power threshing engine in steam cultivation, bj a travelling 

 anchor which pulled it along, carrying also a clip-drum, by 

 which the plough or cultivator is drawn to and fro. 



Howard had a ten horse-power engine, which operated a 

 stationary windlass, and drew a four-tined cultivator and 

 plough to and fro, doing very good work. He also had a 

 balance plough. 



In another part of the field a three-tined grubber was at 

 work. Here the soil was heavier. It did very good work. 



There was also another engine fitted with a double vertical 

 windlass, and a simple mode of steadying the rope in winding 

 and unwinding, and to give and reverse the motion of the 

 windlass. It required great length of rope running loopwise 

 to tlie extreme end of the lot, and passing round a single puUy 

 fastened to a snatch-block. It works two cultivators at once, 

 one from the snatch-block to the middle, the other from that 

 point towards the engine. The rope must of course be strong 

 and heavy, and subject to considerable wear. 



As to the rate at which these steam ploughs and cultivators 

 worked, it may be stated that Howard's ten horse-power, with 

 a pressure of seventy pounds of steam, drawing three mould- 

 boards, and taking about two and a half feet in breadth, and 

 six or seven inches deep, ploughed at the rate of seven and one- 

 half acres a day, of ten hours. Another double cylinder engine 

 of the same power, working a grubber of three tines, took about 

 three feet of land, or at the rate of a dozen acres a day. Fowler's 

 ten horse-power engine, single cylinder, taking four furrows, 

 or about three and one-quarter feet breadth, seven and one-half 

 inches deep, worked at the rate of an acre an hour, or perhaps 

 twelve acres a day. The ploughing was well done, as well as 

 the work of the double Michigan plough. Fowler also had a 

 double cylinder fourteen horse-power engine, with clip-drum 

 . under the boiler, drawing four mould-boards, seven or eight 

 inches deep, at the rate of nine and one-quarter acres a day, of 

 ten hours. 



Steam ploughing for New p]ngland, for the present, at least, 

 is out of the question. If it be economical at all for this 



