supplement. STATISTICS OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE. 



1J()9 



thrown together. Some of them are, of necessity, remote; others I believe to be near at hand ; all of 

 them, I believe, must be adopted and carried out before the deplorable state of agricultural England 

 alters from what it is. (One who has whistled at the Plough in Morn. Chron., June 24th, 1843.) 



8495 — 7784. 11. The application of steam to machinery for raising the water from fen and luiv lands. 

 We have mentioned (§ 7786.), that steam had been employed for this purpose in Cambridgeshire ; and 

 we have since learned from the account of a trial in the newspapers (see Times for July, 1834), that a gas 

 engine has also been so employed in the Cambridge fens. We are now enabled, through the kindness of 

 Mr. C. H. Capper, engine-maker. Union Foundery, Birmingham, to figure and describe a steam-engine and 



lifting machine of a very superior description, which that gentleman has erected on the estate of 



Drake, Esq., at Stainfield in Lincolnshire. " The great advantage," Mr. Capper observes, " of bringing 

 fen and lowlands (formerly rendered useless by floods) into cultivation, by a small outlay of capital, must 

 be my apology for troubling you with so minute a description of the draining machine I have erected for 

 that purpose ; and, as the same may be of use to a few, I shall feel obliged if you will give it a place in 

 your work ; and at the same time add, that by the great improvements which the use of locomotive 

 carriages has made in high-pressure engines, I am enabled to say that as effective an engine as the one 

 described might now be completed for a much less amount; or, if the landowners whose lands are 

 subject to floods were to subscribe, a movable draining-machine might be made, at a very small ex- 

 pense." 



Fig. 1199. shows the elevation of a six-horse portable condensing steam-engine, working a second shaft, 

 marked c, in Jigs. 1200, 1201, and 1202. On this shaft, the large water-wheel d d is fixed. This w bee] 

 revolves in a brick or stone casing, similar to that formed for the wheel of a common water mill, but so 

 accurately fitted as not to allow ot any water passing by either of the sides of the paddles, or by the front ; 

 because this wheel acts by its paddles lifting the water from the bottom of the wheel-race up against the 

 breastwork, and then throwing it over the sluice e. This sluice is formed of movable boards, to admit 

 of regulating the lift of water at pleasure, from 3 feet to 8 feet in height. The water, being raised and 

 thrown over the sluice e, falls into the pond or receiver/, whence it is carried off at as high a level as it 

 will run ; in this case, at about 3 feet higher than the surface of the lands to be drained, and about 6 feet 

 higher than the bottom of the drains. At the lower end of the trough there is a sluice, g , for regulating 

 the quantity of water introduced into the lifting wheel ; because, if this were too great, the power of 

 the steam-engine might be insufficient to turn the wheel, or the machinery might be injured. Tin: 

 wheel, as it will be seen, consists of eight iron paddles, fixed to «:i octagon iron casing ; each paddle acta 

 by lifting up a portion of water from the boom of the wheel-race, and railing it to the top of tin) 



