226 Experimental Inquiry on Draught in Ploughing. 



It appears from these numbers that here the Scotch swing- 

 ploughs went backward in proportion to all the others, being, in 

 fact, no better than the old Berkshire. This may perhaps be ac- 

 counted for by the circumstance that they are made entirely of iron, 

 for the farmers of this land are all of opinion that even iron mould- 

 boards must not be used upon it, because this clay adheres so much 

 more to iron than to wood. At the end of a very short furrow all 

 the ploughs were more or less covered in every part with a thick 

 coat of this very glutinous clay, which belongs to the formation 

 called by geologists the Oxford, or blue clay." It will be seen 

 that in the FF, as a wheel or as a swing-plough, there was no 

 perceptible difference ; but no inference can be drawn from this 

 circumstance as to the general question, because its very small 

 wheels were completely clogged with the clay, and resembled two 

 large balls of earth. The same was the case with the Rutland 

 plough. I must mention, in order to shovv^ the errors which 

 may arise in such trials from inequalities in "the firmness of the 

 ground, that this plough being placed in the low part of a second 

 land the draught-gauge stood at 44 stone only, but rose to 50 

 when we returned to the top of the ridge, which was drier and 

 more trampled. The two other ploughs, which are marked as the 

 lightest, had each of them one wheel only, which ran of course on 

 the unploughed ground. 



The superiority of one plough over another was here much less 

 than on the lighter ground, the difference in the first trial between 

 the highest and lowest draught being in the proportion of 1 to 

 2 J, whilst in this very clogging land the distinction is not so 

 much as between 4 for the easiest and 5 for the heaviest plough 

 — I mean, of course, heaviest in draught. 



There is one point only on which I consider this trial to be 

 conclusive, that is, against those who maintain that there is abso- 

 lutely no soil which may not be tilled by a two-horse plough. 

 Here the ground was stated by the occupier to be in the most 

 favourable state for working ; it was a perfectly clean bean-stub- 

 ble : we departed from the right course of management by throw- 

 ing the furrow-slice downwards instead of upwards, yet the plough- 

 men, three of them accustomed to the land, were unable from the 

 struggling of the cattle to keep their ploughs level ; and as for the 

 horses, it was almost cruel to make them turn the few short furrows 

 required, though the three pair were put in by turns, and they did 

 not go two hundred yards without resting ; at a depth, too, not 

 exceeding six inches.* It is true that we were two inches below 



* I have myself witnessed the same fact on a clay-land farm in the low 

 lands of Surrey, where as fine a pair of cart-horses/ of the Lincoln 

 breed, as were ever whipped, worked in a Scotch swing-plough, held by a 



