&S2 = 366 
Practical Agriculture. 
Wind power. 
Steam power. 
Amount of 
steam power 
used in 
agriculture. 
machine, and other machinery of the feeding-house. Where a 
regular flow of water of sufficient volume can be depended on, 
no other motive-power is found to equal in economy an over- 
shot or a breast water-wheel. Indeed, for the comparatively 
light operations of the farmstead, a very small stream, or even 
the drainage of the land itself, is found amply sufficient, when 
stored during the periods of rest in a reservoir of small area 
dammed for the purpose. Turbines also are used in some 
situations, where an adequate head of water is available, for the 
farm grinding and cutting, these motors having been greatlj 
improved in efficiency during late years by the application o 
scientific principles to their design and manufacture. 
Wind Power. — Wind-engines, equally economical in operatior 
and more cheaply erected, are adopted in some places when 
their fickle, intermittent, and irregular action does not altogethei 
forbid their services in grinding and pumping. One elemen 
in their economy is that, being self-regulating, they will wort 
night and day without attention. Windmills actuating scoop 
wheels for district drainage at one time distinguished the Grea 
Level of the Fens and some other lowland tracts ; and in a fev 
localities they are still retained for baling out the water o 
ditches on very low-lying farms, and discharging it into em 
banked main drains or rivers. 
Steam Poicer. — No statistics have been collected on an ade 
quate scale as to the average amount of steam-power for ever 
hundred acres now engaged in tilling, threshing, hauling, am 
other operations of agriculture. Looking, however, to the fac 
that all except a fractional proportion of the corn -crops o 
England are threshed by steam ; that a majority of the larg 
farms have steam-engines of their own ; that on great numbei 
of medium-sized as well as large occupations are also foun 
engines of small power for chaff-cutting, steaming, &c. ; an 
that farms on which steam - cultivation is practised may b 
enumerated by hundreds in some, and by tens in almost a 
counties, — it is evident that the nominal horse-power ol th 
engines used in agriculture bears a very considerabje proportioi 
— it may probably approach one-fourth — in relation to the toti 
force of horse-teams. Where the threshing is not done by itin^ 
rary steam-threshing machines, as it is on probably a majorit 
of farms, the nominal power of the steam-engine is fully cm 
half, and sometimes considerably exceeds one-half, that of tl 
farm-horses ; and where the steam-plough is adopted and hors( 
have been displaced, the nominal steam-power frequently cqua 
and in many cases exceeds that of the whole force ol horsi 
employed. 
