MECHANICS OF AGRICULTURE. 



51 



to lOin. wide, a team, with two men and four to six horses, 

 going over from four to ten or more acres daily. Seed is 

 at once sown by centrifugal seed sowing machines the 

 first of which were brought to Australia by the author 

 doing from 50 to 100 acres daily, and in very excellent 

 style. The crops grown are light in quantity, from six to 

 ten bushels per acre being about the average. The har- 

 vesting is done by stripping machines, reaping 200 to 400 

 bushels daily. The grain is threshed winnowed, and 

 bagged in the field by different machines. Altogether the 

 system is peculiar, and would not be rated as high-class 

 fanning in either Europe or America. But it is adapted to 

 the light, open treeless lands of South Australia and sec- 

 tions of Victoria and New South Wales, and the skilled 

 agriculturist is careful in securing the tools best adapted 

 for the work he has to do. The results per man, that is. 

 the number of bushels produced per man and horse 

 engaged, are not low by any means. The whole process 

 offers excellent illustration of what mechanical aids are 

 doing for wheat fanning. It is very safe to say that, 

 without their peculiar ploughs, their seed sowers, and their 

 harvesting appliances, it could not pay, possibly, to reap 1 

 bushels of wheat per acre. But by the South Australian 

 system six bushels pay. The author has not a doubt that, 

 with further mechanical aids for ploughing deeper, and 

 as manuring or pasturing enters into their system, much 

 larger returns will be got for the same outlay. 



The principles of agricultural mechanics are identical 

 with the science of mechanics. The lever, wedge and screw 

 have all their outlets in agricultural engineering, in the 

 same manner precisely as in the other branches of 

 mechanics. In the plough, in seed-sowing machines, in 

 mowers, reapers, hay-cutters, baling presses, and the 

 other machines used in agriculture, the knowledge, the 

 practice, and theory of mechanics is as useful in agriculture 

 as in shipbuilding, railroad engineering, or other branches 

 of the art. In the spade, mattock, pick, trenching, drain- 

 ing, and other tools of that type we have the very first 

 principles of the lever and the wedge. To l>o effective, to 

 move soil with the least exertion to the worker, and to 



