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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



HORSE DRILL MACHINE. 



Because we have made many and important 

 improvements in farm implements in this country, 

 it ought not to be supposed, by any of us, that we 

 have arrived at perfection, or that there are none 

 in other parts of the world which may prove of 

 essential benefit to us in our modes of husbandry. 

 The English people have many excellent machines 

 and implements ; but according to our ideas of 

 the fitness of things, they are, most of them, ex- 

 tremely faulty. We examine the expenditure of 

 labor, as closely as of the dollars which that labor 

 has produced. No power is wasted. Our farms 

 are probably cultivated with a less force of men 

 and teams than the same amount of labor requires 

 in any other portion of the world. Plows are grad- 

 uated to all sorts of soils and circumstances, from 

 those scarcely too heavy to be drawn by a man, to 

 those requiring sixteen lusty oxen. If the hoe is 

 an half ounce too heavy, or the shovel handle two 

 inches too short, down sits the farmer's boy and 

 calculates how much power is uselessly expended 

 in one, and what an unnecessary tax and exer- 

 tion upon muscle and tendon is required, in the 

 other. Consequently, our implements have the 

 weight and strength sufficient to perform the ser- 

 vice needed in them, and nothing more. But it 

 has not been so with English emplenients. They 

 have been placed in the hands of workmen unac- 

 customed to compare and think for themselves what 

 tools would work best in certain places, and at the 

 same time somewhat careless in the use of them. 

 The manufacturer has made them stout to with- 

 stand a careless usage, and thus all the implements 

 of husbandry in England are greatly too heavy. 



But they have many excellent tools and ma- 

 chines, well worthy of our attention, and among 

 them the one represented at the head of this ar- 



ticle. We have been much pleased in witnessing 

 the operations of the Horse Drill — it is rapid in 

 performing the work, does it well, and leaves the 

 field in the neatest culture. One evident advan- 

 tage of sowing with a drill over the broadcast 

 machine, or of sowing by hand, is the regular 

 deposition of the seed at one depth, whatever depth 

 may be chosen. Another advantage is the saving 

 of seed: the kernels all being deposited at equal 

 distances from each other, as well as at equal 

 depths. 



This machine will plant wheat, rye, Indian corn, 

 oats, peas, beans, rutabagas, &c, and can be re- 

 gulated to drop any required quantity on an acre. 

 The drills can be thrown in or out of gear sepa- 

 rately, so as to plant a field of any shape without 

 seeding any part twice. They are so arranged as 

 to operate well on all kinds of land — hilly and 

 rough, as well as level and smooth. A man with 

 two horses, can put in from 10 to 12 acres with 

 wheat in a day ; and with one horse he can plant 

 20 acres of corn per day. 



There are two or three different kinds, some 

 possessing advantages which others do not, and 

 costing more. We hope to see them introduced 

 among us, at such prices as will make them acces- 

 sible to every considerable farmer. 



FAIR TESTIMONY. 



At a meeting of the Hillsborough Agricultural 

 Society, held at Weare, August 20, 1852, Brooks 

 SnATTUCK, Esq., of Bedford, N. II., said, he had 

 been 22 years employed in a mill, and for 15 years 

 of the time received from $2,00 to $2,50 per day, 

 hut could make more money upon his farm than 

 in that employment. We know Mr. Shattuck, 

 well, as an enterprising, progressive farmer — one 

 who does not hug old notions, but believes in pro- 



