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'K.'Xl.-— Experimental Inquiry on Draught in Ploughing. — By 

 Philip Pusey, Esq., M.P., iF\R. & G.S. 



Having been led by the prize-essay of Mr. Handley to make 

 some comparative trials of the draught of various ploughs, I beg 

 to lay an account of these before the Society, in the hope that, if 

 others should be induced to make similar inquiries, we may in 

 the end obtain some certain results. 



The first trial was made in last September, between an old 

 Berkshire plough (with a high gallows in front, and a wooden 

 moukl-board), taken from one farm of the parish in which I write ; 

 a small one-wheeled wooden plough, with iron mould-board, made 

 by Mr. Hart, of Wantage, in this neighbourhood, and employed on 

 the other farm ; the Rutland plough of Messrs. Ransome, which 

 I selected because its drau2:ht was marked as the lig-htest in Mr. 

 Handley's paper ; and some other ploughs which I need not now 

 particularize. The field was a clean oat-stubble, the soil a sandy 

 loam moist with rain; the furrow 9 inches wide and 5 deep. 

 The draught of the old Berkshire was about 3 cwt., of the 

 Wantage plough less than 2 cwt., and of the Rutland plough 

 somewhere between these two numbers. Thus it appeared that, 

 within one small parish, the same work was performed on the one 

 farm by two horses, as on the other by three (the smallest number 

 ever attached to the old Berkshire plough), and that too with 

 greater ease to the two horses than to the three. It was also a 

 matter of surprise to me to find that even in this neighbourhood we 

 possessed an implement lighter than any plough produced at the 

 Oxford meeting by those distinguished manufacturers the Messrs. 

 Ransome. Notwithstanding the encouragement thus afforded to 

 further inquiry, it was necessary in the first instance to procure a 

 better instrument than the dynamometer then employed, the same 

 of which a figure is given in the last number of our Journal, p. 143, 

 for the hand on the dial-plate moved so rapidly to and fro, in con- 

 sequence of inequalities in the motion of the plough or of the 

 horses (if the draft, for instance, was 2 cwt., the hand travelled 

 faster than the eye could follow it between 1 and 3) that we 

 could only judge the draught by observing the extreme points 

 between which the hand varied, and any accurate observation of 

 small differences was out of the question. I found, from Mr. 

 Cottam, of the firm of Messrs. Cottam and Hallen, London, that 

 this vibration was a difficulty which he had long wished in vain to 

 surmount : but he at leno-th suo-o-ested a mode of correctino^ the 

 defect, which I am glad to say I have found completely successful 

 in using the new draught-gauge Avhich he made for me on that 

 principle. 



Before commencing the new trials I acquainted Messrs. Ran- 



VOL. I. R 



