608 



Report to HM.H, the President 



But though turnips are sown in lines, and come up thickly in 

 lines, no sooner are the thriving young plants well marshalled in 

 green array than nineteen in twenty are ruthlessly cut down by 

 the hoe, so that the field appears for a time once more bare. 

 The roots must of course be allowed ample room in the row, but 

 some manure will have been wasted in nourishing the plants 

 doomed to perish. Hence Mr. Hornsby's drop-drill, avoiding this 

 wholesale massacre, is made to drop the seed and the manure, by 

 a second step of mechanic frugality, only at those points in the 

 lines where the plants are intended to stand. Nor are these points 

 in the lines fixed points, for their distance can be varied from 

 9 inches to 18 inches asunder, and the intervals between the rows 

 can be equally varied from 15 to 30 inches. The dose, again, of 

 mixed manure can be varied from 10 to 50 bushels per acre. 

 Such is the elastic, yet accurate pliability, with which in agricul- 

 ture mechanism has seconded chemistry. Having now gone 

 through the various kinds of drills — corn or turnip drills, ridge 

 or flat drills, dry or wet, line or drop drills — we may pass to a 

 kindred but entirely new class of implement. 



2. The Top- dresser or Manure-distributor. 



Although, as has been said, wheat is seldom sown with the 

 manure-drill, being usually provided with its chief requisite, 

 nitrogen, through farm-yard dung or through sheepfolding, no 

 plant is so liable as wheat to break down from its first promise, and 

 on inferior soils, whether too light or too heavy, one might almost 

 say that wheat always looks well before Christmas and always looks 

 ill before Lady-day. Our predecessors, to refresh its flagging 

 strength, used to spread soot or pigeon's dung, both ccmtaining 

 ammonia, over it, especially on the lower sides of the ridges near 

 the water-furrow, where the plant was perhaps almost killed by 

 the lodgment of rain. But their practice was of course limited 

 by resources so narrow. We having guano and nitrate can deal 

 out liberally the timely supply. But if sown by hand, these very 

 light manures, especially guano, are carried away before their 

 descent by a strong wind ; and sometimes when half a gale has 

 been blowing it has seemed to me that I was manuring my neigh- 

 bour's field quite as much as my own. A manure-distributor was 

 therefore required; and the agricultural meeting at Exeter 

 brought out eight competitors, the winner being Mr. Holmes's of 

 Norwich. 



I rejoice to find that we have not only a good invention here, 

 but that it is being actively used. The machine, new as it is, and 

 involving a new outlay for artificial manure, is employed very 

 largely in the western division of Norfolk — the classic ground of 



