Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 357 



in tillage, a subject which has been often before you, the English have 

 established and harmonious views on this point. They say it is very 

 important, once in four or five years, to go away down and tear 

 up the soil below the cut of any common plow, as deep as fifteen 

 or twenty inches. Mr. Campbell, one of the most successful 

 of their tillers, bas a steam cultivator, the prongs of which will 

 go thirty inches deep, and it takes two thirty-horse engines to pull it 

 to and fro. They do not want such tillage for every crop ; but for 

 roots the deeper the better. It is this power of making a deep, 

 mellow field, without turning the top soil under, for . which steam 

 is chiefly valued as a motive power in room of horses. Steam has 

 taught them that if a farmer can keep his surface clean, so he will not 

 need to turn under weeds ; he can use not a plow but a big drag in 

 tillage with better results than if he depended wholly on the plow. 

 Another advantage which steam gives is the great rapidity. I saw a 

 fine field of wheat ready for the reaper Monday morning. On Wed- 

 nesday night the wheat was off, the stubble was torn fine and deep, 

 and the root crop was in. If a farmer gets a little behind hand in 

 the pressing season, which there comes in August, he can clear out all 

 arrears and bring everything sharp up in two or three days with one 

 of those twenty-horse engines. For common depth, say seven to 

 nine inches, they could not say that steam was cheaper than horses. 

 It is not proposed to replace horses with steam, but steam gives them 

 a practicable and efficient method for rapid and deep tillage, and for 

 this the English farmer employs the engine. Between 2,000 and 

 3,000 of them are in use. 



Culture of White Grains. 



The first peculiarity that impresses an American farmer when step- 

 ping on an English estate is the absence of maize. They call wheat, 

 barley and oats by the general name of corn ; but our Indian corn 

 I did not see at all. Hence corn harvest with them means August 

 work on small grain. Their wheat, barley and oats ripen all alike, 

 and harvest with the English farmer is a time of stress and push, and 

 of critical days. If the weather is good all is well. His hands get 

 good pay, and all goes merry. But bad weather is a serious disaster. 

 Sometimes a week of shower and fog just then will throw a man into 

 the hands of the sheriff. 



In oats I could not see that they were greatly in advance of us. 

 In fact, they admit that they do not know more about oats than their 

 grandsires did. Nor could I observe anything remarkable about their 



