54 AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE. 



for ordinary crops, subsoiling, draining, ditching, tank- 

 making, and other operations, for each class of work special 

 adaption of the implement is necessary. And in these 

 days, it is better and cheaper to provide suitable tools than 

 to worry men and horses, and waste time and money trying 

 to get on with tools that are not suitable. 



In stump-extracting and tree-falling machines, some- 

 times termed " forest devils," we have most excellent results 

 from the application of lever power. By a combination of 

 levers and chains, or by the use of the screw, trees and 

 stumps are taken down, or raised out of the ground by one 

 or two men- or horses may be used these contrivances 

 are able to tear out of the ground stumps, roots, stones, etc., 

 that could not be moved by a 10-horse power engine with- 

 out the aid of the lever or screw, or hydraulic force. 



Seed sowers combine the screw, lever, and centrifugal 



' O 



force in such a manner as to sow, with mathematical regu- 

 larity, from 50 to 1 00 acres of wheat daily, one man and a 

 horse doing the work. 



Mowing, reaping, binding, stripping, threshing, winnow- 

 ing, and other machines of that type, are all built upon the 

 recognised mechanical principles followed in other classes 

 of engineering. The rules for quality and suitability of 

 the materials in the machine apply in these with even 

 greater force than in ploughs. Every pound of unnecessary 

 weight, every unnecessary combination or increase of parts 

 all tell against complicated machines of this kind. Steel 

 and iron, now-a-days capable of endless applications in 

 mechanics, are decidedly better than wood in all machines 

 in which jolting, dust, and risks of wear from friction of 

 the parts are combined with very rapid speed. Machines 

 of this kind have been improved immensely since their first 

 introduction in Australia, nineteen years atjo, and improve- 

 ments still go on steadily. The results already are that the 

 white man, with their aid, is able, even in .these depressed 

 times for grain, to hold his own in the market in competi- 

 tion with grain from Russia, India, and other cheap labour 

 countries. Draining has develop H! an immense variety of 

 tools of the spade, or wedge and lever type, to every one of 

 which the features apply of quality and weight of material 



