1867.] Agriculture. 515 



English Agricultural Society at Bury last July, was the illustration 

 given of the economical application of steam-power to light-land 

 cultivation. By means of two engines, one at either end of the 

 cultivated field, two tools are worked at once ; and when the widest 

 tools were used — Fowler drags a 13-tine cultivator which takes a 

 width of 4 yards at once — the cultivation was accomplished at the 

 rate of 50 acres in a day. It seems plain that on light-land farms 

 as well as clays, wherever the area has been properly laid out for 

 steam cultivation there need in future be no more horse-power 

 provided and kept throughout the year than will suffice for the 

 harvesting and marketing of the crops ; in fact, for all the work of 

 carriage. With Fowler's or with Howard's double engines, each 

 with double drum working two tools simultaneously, there is no 

 reason why a square of 20 acres, or even more of land which had 

 been ploughed by steam-power before winter, should not be grubbed 

 or cultivated, and receive a thorough harrowing all at once in a 

 single day in spring, or why a thorough fallowing after a winter's 

 frost upon the autumn tillage of stiff clays should not be thus 

 accomplished almost at a blow. 



The hot and variable weather, accompanied by thunderstorms, 

 of the current season has been greatly against the dead-meat 

 trade ; and some easy preservative of quality is under such circum- 

 stances greatly needed, Messrs. Medlock and Bailey have patented 

 the use of their solution of bisulphite of lime for this purpose. Two 

 quarts of this solution, one pint of common salt, and four gallons of 

 water, constitute the wash, by which it is said that a joint of meat 

 may be preserved fresh in the hottest weather. A dip night and 

 morning into such a mixture will keep meat sweet for any length 

 of time; and when afterwards dipped in cold water for a few 

 minutes and then dried thoroughly with a cloth it is ready for 

 cooking, unaltered in any detectable way from the day it was 

 slaughtered. Such are the assertions of the patentees; and they 

 are sufficiently striking to deserve examination. 



The weather of the past spring and summer has proved on the 

 whole better for succulent growth than for the formation and 

 ripening of seed, and the reports of the grain harvest are not satis- 

 factory. More than half the reports of the wheat crop supplied to 

 the ' Agricultural Gazette ' declare it to be under average, and that 

 is a larger proportion than was similarly returned last year, when 

 the crop was undoubtedly an inferior one. The crops of spring- 

 sown oats and barley, and especially of beans, are believed, on the 

 other hand, to be generally good. 



