SOWING, AND SOWING MACHINES. 



seeds irregularly ; and it is very little 

 superior to sowing by the hand, ex- 

 cept in the case of small seeds, which 

 cannot so well be spread evenly by 

 the hand. 



" The drill husbandry has suggest- 

 ed oilier more complicated machines, 

 of which some account will be found 

 in the article Drill. The principle 

 of these is to deliver the seed by 

 means of funnels, each corresponding 

 to a small furrow made by a coulter 

 placed immediately before the fun- 

 nel ; and some of these machines 

 perform the work very regularly and 

 satisfactorily. As the inequalities of 

 the ground require that the coulters 

 should move up or down, to allow 

 for these inequalities, the seed can- 

 not be accurately deposited at a given 

 depth ; and some improvement in the 

 mode of drilling is yet desirable, and 

 has, in some measure, been effected. 

 The patent lever drill in common 

 use is very imperfect in its w-ork, and 

 the remedy lies in the greater atten- 

 tion to the preparation of the surface. 

 When this is effected, the levers may 

 be set aside, and a much simpler drill, 

 such as was used at first, may re- 

 place it. The object is to make fur- 

 rows of equal depth in which to de- 

 posite the seed, and to cover this uni- 

 formly. The land must consequently 

 be more carefully prepared by repeat- 

 ed harrowing and rolling, till the sur- 

 face resembles the seed-beds in a 

 garden. A simple drill, which makes 

 equidistant furrows at a given depth, 

 in which the seed drops regularly, 

 will then do better work than a more 

 complicated machine ; but if still 

 greater accuracy and perfection are 

 desired, the dibble must be had re- 

 course to. No one will deny that 

 seed deposited by means of a dibble 

 is distributed more equally and cov- 

 ered with a more equal depth of soil 

 than by any other means, and that 

 there is a great economy of seed in 

 this mode of sowing ; but the slow- 

 ness of the operation, and the num- 

 ber of hands it would require to dib- 

 ble all the seed on a large farm, have 

 prevented its being very generally 

 adopted. Seejlrable Land. Manyat- 

 740 



tempts have been made to invent ma- 

 chines to imitate the work done by 

 hand in dibbling, and hitherto with 

 no marked success, owing chiefly to 

 the difficulty of clearing the dibbles 

 from the adhering soil, and making a 

 clean hole, and also of letting the 

 seed fall exactly in the dibble holes. 

 Several patents have lately been ta- 

 ken out for dibbling machines, of 

 which we shall only notice three. 

 The first machine consists of large 

 hollow disks, armed at the circum- 

 ference with blunt projections or 

 knobs, which make a depression in 

 the surface as the disk revolves : 

 these knobs are hollow, and open by 

 one half sliding upward as the knob 

 leaves the depression it has made. 

 The seed which has been deposited 

 in the hollow knob falls into the hole. 

 This machine is said to do its work 

 well. 



" The next is Bradshaw's patent, 

 which is not so generally known, 

 having only been tried by the invent- 

 or and his friends. Here the dibbles 

 are moved up and down by means of 

 a crank, or eccentric circle, and are 

 twisted in the ground by means of a 

 projection from the shank of the dib- 

 ble, which is connected with the frame 

 of the machine; and when the dibble is 

 moved by the crank, the rod is twist- 

 ed by the difference in the motion of 

 the crank and the machine. The 

 seed is delivered by means of a cyl- 

 inder witli cavities in its surface, 

 which revolves very near the ground, 

 the seed being kept in these cavities 

 by a leather belt, which only lets 

 them out at the lowest part. 



" The last is somewhat on the 

 same principle, and was invented by 

 the late Rev. W. L. Rham. This ma- 

 chine, which was exhibited at the 

 meeting of the Royal Agricultural So- 

 ciety of England at Liverpool, in 1841 , 

 is thus noticed by the judges of the 

 implements appointed by that So- 

 ciety : 



" ' The Rev. W. L. Rham exhibited 

 an implement, the principal object of 

 which is to extend and improve the 

 system of drilling and dibbling wheat, 

 beans, &c. It is chiefly in its latter 



