Fortunes for Farmers 



posts carrying a cable around every field, and a 

 pair of trolleys on the end cables will bear between 

 them a wire that may be moved at will to reach 

 every part. From this moving wire the various 

 implements will draw their power through a 

 connecting wire or pole as our tramcars do, 

 either to a portable tractor like the present 

 agricultural motor, or more probably the imple- 

 ment itself will contain a motor. 



These implements of the future will be immense 

 with great spider bodies and wheels, gigantic 

 and frail to our imagination, machine tools 

 constructed scientifically, not lumber boxes of 

 wood and cast iron that must be stout enough 

 to withstand the horses' efforts and kicks, the 

 labourer's clumsy handling, and the combined 

 attacks of rust and rot as they lie exposed to the 

 weather. They will run their curiously formed 

 finger-like tentacles through the soil, turning 

 it here and there, probing around the crop roots, 

 hunting for hidden weeds, and carrying manure 

 where requisite. In time of drought, water from 

 the nearest dyke (hedges, those abominable 

 weed beds, gone) will be sprayed from a pipe pass- 

 ing regularly and automatically all day. Indeed 

 most of the work might be automatic, the wires 

 checking and reversing at the field's end, so that 

 one sees a blue-coated engineer in the corner, 



10 



