Polytechnic AssociATioy Proceedings. 9|7 



the technical and professional knowledge required in managing an 

 instrument at once so complex and so dangerous as a steam engine, 

 the liability to accident and derangement, to which all intricate 

 mechanism is exposed in the open field, and the important though 

 common-place skill necessitated in the management of a number of 

 persons attending the same machine, it will be seen that the diffi- 

 culties in the way of the financial success of steam cultivation are 

 so numerous and varied, that such success cannot in any degree 

 of fairness be claimed or conceded; and in support of this opinion 

 we may cite the words of the Pi'esident of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, that it is " a success which a very small amount of 

 ignorance and inattention would convert into a failure." In other 

 words, by far the most important branch of engineering, as applied 

 to agriculture in England, under the most favorable circumstances, 

 has produced nothing but a system of plowing by steam, which, by 

 the slightest carelessness on the part of managers or operatives, 

 will be sure to result in financial loss and failure, a result which we 

 may remark is very different from what we should demand and 

 expect from the application of science to industrial pursuits; for 

 the true object of engineering is not merely to show that a 

 mechanical problem may be solved, but to increase the capabilities 

 of labor, and by lightening the toil, add to the prosperity and 

 welfare of mankind. 



Any statement relating to the subject in hand, would necessarily 

 be incomplete, without some notice of what has been accomplished 

 or attempted in this country; but such notice must be very brief, 

 for the simple reason that the American experiments in steam cul- 

 ture ma}^ be said to have been thus far little more than a repetition of 

 those in England with locomotive or traction engines, the system 

 of draught adopted in the most successful English apparatus being 

 to such an extent unsuited to the requirements of American form- 

 ing, that as far as the w^riter has been able to ascertain, not a single 

 trial thereof has been made here. One of the pioneer efforts to 

 practically apply the system of plowing by steam in the United 

 States, was made by Obed Hussey, of mowing machine celebrity, 

 who at the cattle show of the State Agricultural Society of Mar}-- 

 land, held at Baltimore in 1855, exhibited an apparatus which 

 " drew four large plows several times across the field, turning 

 furrows from seven to fourteen inches deep." It was afterward 

 attempted to use this plow on the prairies of Indiana, but much 

 difficulty was found in making the plows work satisfactorily, and 



