Steam Culture. 
403 
now see cause to ^ive the preference to strong soils, and that in 
consequence of the prospect opened for them, by the united in- 
fluences of improved drainage and steam cultivation. 
But whilst the indirect benefit to be conferred on clay soils by 
the substitution of steam fov horse power, should occupy the first 
place in our anticipations, the prospect of direct profit is bright 
if somewhat ill-defined. 
The judges at Canterbury from their calculation on the work done 
for a short time, under the pressure of competition, estimate that 
land requiring rather more than the traction power of 4 horses 
moving at the rate of 2h miles an hour," to draw an ordinary 
iron plough, can be ploughed by Mr. Fowler at the rate of 11 
acres per day, at a cost of 4s. Qd. per acre. On the other hand, 
the value of the work when done, may be tested by the fact that 
some spirited owners of a Fowler near Warwick, besides culti- 
vating their own farms, find that their neighbours will gladly pay 
them 2O5. an acre for ploughing stiff land, besides providing 
coal and water, which together cannot add less than 2s. an acre, 
making a total cost of '22s. Nor is Smith's Cultivator less highly 
appreciated — one of its earliest and most practical employers, 
Mr. Pike, having done work and supplied the use of his ap- 
paratus to his neighbours, at the rate of 25s. per acre for the 
double operation of breaking up and crossing, they finding coal 
and beer. 
" Intervalla vides humane commoda." — Surely the margin 
between 4s. Qd. and 22s. (with probably a not very dissimilar one 
in the case of Mr. Pike), is sufiiciently broad to excite attention 
and stimulate enterprise ; surely it is sufficiently broad not only 
to ensure a man against those risks and contingencies which 
beset all human enterprises, but likewise to guarantee a good profit. 
And yet if we take into account the extra strain, and the risk of 
breakages and stoppages arising from breaking up a hard pan for 
the first time to the extra depth of 2 or 3 inches, or if we look to 
the alternative cost of horse-labour under such circumstances, or 
to the value of the work when done, which of us will assert that 
the hirers do not get their money's worth ? 
But if this wide discrepancy between the theoretic limit of the 
cost of doing the work and the value of the work when done, 
augurs well for the development of steam-culture, it likewise 
shows how very much we are at sea as to the economical aspect 
of the subject, and how wide a divergence there is between the 
estimates of the sanguine and interested and the anticipations of 
the wary or prejudiced. The practical questions which this 
discrepancy suggests are self-evident ; let us then try to examine 
its origin and diminish its extent, rather than enlarge upon them. 
