POLYTECSNIC ASSOCIATION PROCEEDINGS. Q^Q 



employed by Fawkes and others, we would simply make a sugges- 

 tion, which, as far as we know, is original, but which we have had 

 no opportunity of practically testing, that inasmuch as the bottom 

 of the furrow is always comparatively solid, it would be well to 

 so arrange the plows as to open a furrow in advance of the two 

 lateral sets of wheels of the engine, so that the wheels could run 

 wholly on the firm hard bottom of the furrows, thus obviating their 

 sinking into the soil, and utilizing the hitherto spent force of the 

 engine in a proportionate degree. With reference to the objection 

 often brought against the mold-board plow, employed in the appa- 

 ratus of which we are now speaking, that it exerts as much force 

 in compressing the soil beneath as in pulverizing that above it, we 

 consider it a piece of nonsense, and nothijag could better show the 

 slight extent to which the practical principles of agricultural engi- 

 neering are understood, than that such a fallacy should be so 

 extensively believed. 



We have seen that the term "agricultural engineering," as far as 

 used at all, has, for the most part, been restricted to the cultivation 

 of the soil by steam, and that, in the field indicated, it has been 

 23roductive of no really useful or paying progress. Yet, when we 

 reflect how many other branches of agricultural labor have been 

 made the subject of mechanical appliances, at the hands of inde- 

 jDendent projectors and manufacturers; how, under all the varied 

 conditions of farming, there can scarcely be found a single depart- 

 ment acknowledged to be perfect; and how, more than all,, aew 

 and broad openings for improvements are being constantly devel- 

 oped by the growth of the farming interests of the comitry, who 

 can doubt that engineering, as a science, should be systematized to 

 meet the requirements of agriculture, and that to the tillage of the 

 soil should be brought the assistance of a class of practitioners 

 educated in those branches of civil and mechanical engineering 

 most directly relating to or involved in providing machinery for 

 farm operations, or in carrying out such operatians themselves ? 

 We know that we may be met here by the statement that some 

 departments of agricultural machinery, as, for instance, the reaper 

 and mower, have been brought to a condition of comparative per- 

 fection without such assistance; yet, could we trace the history in 

 such isolated classes, we would find that success had been attained 

 at an expense absolutely astounding in the aggregate, compared to 

 what would have been sufficient to secure the same end, if agricul- 

 tural engineering, as a science, had existed^ and that the knowledge 



