92 
Exmoor Reclamatien. 
Steam Cultivation. 
Having decided on trying steam, Mr. Knight had the difficult 
task of selecting from the various rival makers and systems the 
best machinery for his purpose. He found that Fowler's double- 
engine set had the advantage of going at once to work without 
any preliminary fixing of machinery, as well as the immense 
power of a straight and single action, so necessary in carrying 
out the Duke of Sutherland's bold determination to manufac- 
ture arable land out of deep peats accumulated during centuries 
over the rough debris of perished forests. But in order to use 
double engines, nearly parallel roads or tracks, along which 
the engines can travel, are necessary, and such did not exist 
on Exmoor. To make such roads would have been very costly ; 
and as Mr. Knight's object was to cultivate for permanent and 
improved pasture, and not to establish tracts of arable land, 
they would become useless in a few years when the final object 
of the reclamation had been achieved. On the other hand, the 
number of men required for working all the old roundabout 
systems rendered their employment too costly. 
So stood matters until, at the Taunton Show of the Royal Agri- 
cultural Society in 1875, Messrs. Barford and Perkins exhibited 
a new system, invented by Mr. F. Savage, C.E., of King's Lynn. 
After a careful inspection of the ground to be ploughed, Mr. 
Barford undertook to construct a 10-horse engine and set of 
tackle to work Messrs. Fowler's Sutherland or Marshland plough 
on Exmoor. The trial took place, to Mr. Knight's complete 
satisfaction, in 1876. The principle of reducing the speed to 
meet an extra heavy strain makes this 10-horse engine master 
of all the power needed — and by passing the large subsoil-hook 
along the bottom of an empty furrow, instead of ploughing and 
subsoiling at one operation, the whole tackle is relieved from a 
strain that might be detrimental to it. In some wet places this 
hook has succeeded in grubbing the subsoil nearly three feet 
below the original surface. 
The ploughs, both the marshland and four-furrow plough, 
used by Mr. Knight, were made by Messrs. Fowler of Leeds, and 
so good are they, that no stone has yet been met with in the 
process of steam-cultivation on Exmoor that has seriously 
damaged either of them. 
Mr. Savage's system does away with the heavy detached 
drums which formed an essential part of all the old single 
engine sets, and he has arranged the road driving-wheels so 
that they can be used, when ploughing, as most eflicient wind- 
ing-drums, the ropes working in boxes sunk in the wheels, 
and the end of the engine being blocked up as a platform while 
