Ploughing hy Steam. 489 



cultivation. Coals are now procurable, throughout Great Britain, at prices 

 which have caused the steam-engine to be extensively introduced as a substi- 

 tute for animal labour in many of the processes connected with agriculture. 

 Thrashing, cleaning, and grindmg corn, hay-chopping, turnip-slicing, &c., are 

 now performed by small engines fixed on farm premises : even the churn has 

 its steam-engine, managed by the dairy-maid ; and so great is the advantage 

 arising to the dairy-farmer from the regularity of motion, and economy pro- 

 duced by it, that hundreds of small engines, for this simple purpose alone, 

 are used in the north of England and in Scotland. But these are humble 

 savings compared with the benefits to be derived from the vast steam power 

 which may be brought to bear on the soil itself. Those agriculturists who 

 are acquainted with the effects produced by the valuable subsoil plough, 

 recently invented by Mr. Smith of Deanston, will readily appreciate the 

 importance of an invention which will enable them to employ that kind of plough 

 at a much diminished cost per acre. Mr. Smith's plough, with steam power, 

 will effect a revolution in agriculture. Implements of husbandry have hitherto 

 been restricted, in form, weight, and dimensions, to the powers and manage- 

 ableness of a team of horses. A new class of instruments will take their 

 place : the stifFest soils may be broken up and pulverised to any desired 

 depth ; strong clays, the natural wheat lands, may be profitably cultivated, 

 rendered more fertile, and fitted to bear a better and more systematic rotation 

 of crops. 



" Such are a few of the benefits which land-owners and agriculturists will 

 derive from the substitution of steam for animal power in husbandry. It is 

 also no slight advantage, in a national point of view, that this important 

 change will be effected, unaccompanied by any of those temporary evils which 

 too frequently attend the application of mechanical discoveries to existing 

 arts. This invention will not displace a single human being from his accus- 

 tomed healthy occupations : it will, on the contrary, occasion new and in- 

 creased employment for agricultural labourers; it will restore to the support 

 of man a considerable portion of that large amount of produce now sacrificed 

 to the maintenance of agricultural horses; it will furnish local employment 

 to the rapidly increasing rural population of the empire, by rescuing millions 

 of acres of bog and waste land from obnoxious sterility * ; it will fix on their 

 native soil multitudes of those poor Irish labourers, who annually migrate to 

 Great Britain in search of work and food, or who are forced, with numbers of 

 our own countrymen, to suffer the hardships and dangers inseparable from 

 emigration to wild and distant regions." 



Since the above was sent to press, the Mechanics Magazine for July 30. 



* Extract from the ^'Fourth Report of the Parliamentary Commissioners ap- 

 pointed to inquire into the nature and extent of the several Bogs in Ireland ; and 

 the practicability of draining and cultivating them: 1814." — "The extent of peat 

 soil in Ireland exceeds 2,830,000 English acres." The instructions to the 

 engineers limited their surveys to bogs containing 500 acres and upwards ; 

 but it appears from the same Report that the extent of the smaller bogs in 

 Ireland amounts to no less than 170,600 acres. "A soil covered with peat 

 is a soil covered not only with fuel, but likewise with manure. It is the ex- 

 cess of manure only which is detrimental ; and it is much more easy to destroy 

 it than to create it. To cultivate a bog is a much less difficult task than to 

 improve a sand. If there is a proper level to admit of draining, the larf^er the 

 scale of operations, the less must the comparative expense be ; because ma- 

 chinery mny^ for many purposes, take the place of manual labour ; and the trials 

 that have been already made by private individuals, and which are stated in 

 the different Reports, prove not only the feasibility of the general project, 

 but afford strong grounds to believe that any capital expended upon it, after 

 mature and well-digested plans, would, in a very few years, afford a great and 

 increasing interest, and would contribute to the wealth, prosperity, and popu- 

 lation of the island." — Sir H. Davy to the Commissioners, Feb, 1. 1811. 



