Report of Society's Meetings. 415 



especially in unmanageable clay where the soil remains sticking to the 

 teeth of the implement, fortunately, however, the time of working the 

 fallow, starting in May, and the preparation of land, for carraway seed, 

 etc., is the best in the year for the purpose. 



I give a few figures of the Steam cultivator, which show that in 

 about a year we worked 267*3 hectares, an average of 624 per day, the 

 cost of which was /lo 41 per hectare ; in future the cost will probably 

 be less. By using horses the expenses would be about the same as for 

 ploughing, i.e., fio'^o. 



Of the other implements the steam harrow is at present the only one 

 in use, and that but seldom, because the horse harrow does the required 

 work quite as well. For 79 hectares or 11 per day, the cost is/5 86 per 

 heftare. With horses it costs only /a per heftare, but we can scarcely 

 compare the two cultivations, as what can be done by the Steam harrow is 

 hardly possible with horses, from which we can see that the steam 

 implement is more advisable. 



1 hope I have been plain enough in explaining the difficulties of the 

 Steam ploughing implement and what are the reasons tor its use on the 

 Wilhelmina Polder— especially the use of the turning cultivator. We 

 may state that the Steam Plough is worked on the Wilhelmina Polder 

 but we more especially use the extirpator. If we wish to introduce Steam 

 ploughing it must only be in places where the areas are large. It can 

 only be used on farms of at least 1,000 he6tares, and which are divided 

 into very large fields. In the Polder the fields are 8 to 10 heftares, and 

 to work the same profitably, we require a length of at least 300 metres, 

 otherwise too much is lost by the turning. The unmanageable clay — 

 I mean the clay which cakes into hard lumps in the summer and be- 

 comes a slough in the winter — requires broad hard gravel paths and 

 strong conduits. Working with narrow paths is very difficult, especially 

 in the rainy season, as it is quite impossible to keep the locomotives on 

 them and they often slip into the ditches. If the weather is not too 

 changeable and the dry season lasts, the work can be done much better. 

 In such a wet season as that of 1879, the profits were small. 



In the English letter mention was made of land divided into small 

 beds on account of drainage by open ditches crossing each other. On 

 such land we require a locomotive of 12 horse power, which must have 

 a road of 3" 10 metres and a cultivator of 2 08 metres (now 268) broad, 

 quite impracticable in use as the plan will shew, unless we work only in 

 one way. 



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