Ploughs and Ploughing. 



299 



not require to be so nice with a wheeled as with a swing 

 plough, as the wheels carry the plough accurately at the one 

 setting. 



A great deal depends on the kind and arrangement of the 

 wheels. The small single wheel below the beam is better than 

 none at all, but it is of infinitely little use compared to the 

 benefits to be derived from two wheels ; while in the most 

 modern forms — mostly American — there are three wheels fitted 

 on, two in front and one behind. Further, these wheels are as 

 large in diameter as possible, and narrow on the face of the 

 rims. A broad-rimmed wheel is a mistake ; on a sticky soil 

 it clogs up with earth and is only a nuisance and holdback, 

 while a scraper on each is absolutely necessary on such soils, 

 though on sandy and loamy ground it may be dispensed with. 

 With a wheel of the largest possible diameter, a narrow rim, 

 and a scraper, the whole runs more smoothly and with less 

 clogging, and the draught is lighter and the work easier. 



On some ploughs, to obviate the clogging of the wheels on 

 sticky land, it is customary to use a slide-foot — a piece of 

 iron fastened to the beam with a part turned horizontally so 

 as to slide along the surface of the ground, and thus give a 

 gauge for the depth. It does not work so well as a wheel, 

 however, and cannot take the place of two or three wheels. 



TJie Skim-Coulter. 



An important and indispensable adjunct of all ploughs is the 

 skim-coulter; so indispensable that the writer does not believe 

 that any satisfactory work can ever be done without it. Many 

 champion ploughmen of the old school could, by adjusting the 

 " rake " or set of the ordinary coulter, so twine a furrow-slice 

 over that the grass was completely covered out of sight, some- 

 times using a dragging chain trailing from the coulter over 

 the edge of the furrow-slice as it slipped past ; but the liability 

 of this to grow green in the " seams " before seed-time — 

 especially during a mild winter — was great, and it is a mistake 

 nowadays not to use the arrangements specially designed to 

 obviate this defect, especially when the ploughmen are not of 

 the best quality. In the digging plough, and even in the common 

 chilled steel short-breasted ones, the skim-coulter is a very large 



