Exmoor Reclamation. 
93 
at work. By this arrangement the entire machine is simplified, 
the boiler is spared the strain it is subjected to when the wind- 
ing-drum is attached to it, and the large driving-wheels do all 
the work, whether on the road or in the field. The road-wheels 
can be driven either together or one at a time, or one forward 
and the other backward, so that the engine can actually be 
turned by steam on the ground on which it stands. But the in- 
vention that makes this engine more particularly suited to 
Exmoor is, that it has a very slow speed-gear attached to it, by 
which it can be lifted in a very few minutes out of any hole or 
bog into which it may have sunk. The ploughing-tackle is 
worked by Campain's anchors, moved by chains and balls, on 
Mr. Savage's latest plan. If, then, water can be led along a 
plough-track to the foot of the engine, which can frequently 
be done on Exmoor, the engine and rope take only one man to 
work it. The Campain's anchors are pushed forward by the 
balls at the discretion of the ploughman ; and although a spare 
man usually attends the plough, to carry the signal flag, to 
manage the rope-porters where needed, or to turn a stone out 
of the way, the set can be worked under favourable circum- 
stances for half-a-day with two men only — one with the engine 
and the other with the implement. The men who now work 
the apparatus successfully were agricultural labourers when Mr. 
Barford came to Exmoor. Compared with the six or seven 
hands usually employed with the old roundabout sets, the ad- 
vantage is immense. The engine works with a very small 
quantity of coal. 
Passing over the details of what might make a very interest- 
ing agricultural tale under the title of ' Adventures of a Steam- 
Cultivator on its Journeys through Devonshire Lanes and over 
Somersetshire Moors,' it will be enough to state that, in the 
autumn of 1877, the engine, working a Sutherland plough by a 
roundabout apparatus, Avas in steady work in exterminating some 
400 acres of natural forest grass growing on a skin of primeval 
peat, nearly all moist, and in some parts with the water standing 
for an acre or more ankle deep. 
This Sutherland plough consisted of two huge shares, that is, 
one at each end of the implement, and also at either end a sub- 
soiler in the form of the fluke of an anchor without palms, the 
whole resting on four barrel-like wooden rollers, which acted as 
wheels as well as rollers. The engine having been by signal 
set to work, the plough was slowly dragged forward between two 
automatic anchors, cutting a huge slice of peat, and making a 
furrow 12 inches deep and nearly 2 feet wide; the sod, as it 
was turned over by the plough, being rolled flat by the barrel 
wheels. When a double journey had been performed forwards 
