Steam Culture. 
419 
A<2;aln wc have to do with the efficiency of the horse in 
ploug^hing and cultivatinji^ only, which may be above the average, 
in consequence of his labour when applied to other farming pur- 
poses not being equally effective ; but then unquestionably tlu? 
efficiency of the steam-engine for ploughing and cultivation is 
above that which it could exhibit at other farm-work, which at 
present it does not venture to undertake. 
But above all the season is to be considered at which the work 
is to be executed : this tells upon all farms, but very much more 
on heavy than on liylit lands. To illustrate the amount of varia- 
tions in different months which maybe considered to exist on the 
former soils, in the demand and consequently the value of horse- 
labour, I venture to quote a most striking passage from Mr. 
Morton's paper on the Forces used in Agriculture. 
" On examining the horse-labour of a farm of 240 acres of arable land under 
alternate husbandry, it will be found that it does not much exceed 500 days 
of a pair of liovses in the year, and that the need for it is distributed among 
the months extiemely unevenly. Not more than 35 days of a team per month 
are wantt'd in December, January, and February ; about 45 days a month are 
wanted iu March and April, IMay and June ; about 15 daj's are wanted in 
July; about 60 in August, and 90 in September; and 55 in October, 
Xovember, and December. August and September stand highest; and as 
tliere are not generally more than 24 working days in each of these two 
months, there must be a provision of at least three and a half pair of horses 
all the year, in order that the work of August and September may be done. 
Now, the two-fifths of the horse-labour ^vhich is proper for steam-power, is 
not going merely to displace two-fifths of these seven horses through the year ; 
for the ploughing and cultivating being done by steam, will take not two- 
fifths, but more than half of the labour of the encumbered months of Mai'ch 
and April, May and August, and September and October, and so reduce the 
amount to something like 35 days' work during each month of the year, which 
two pairs of horses will more than easily accomplish." 
I quote from the Bath and West of England Journal (vol. viii., 
part ii., page 303), without knowing where the error of mention- 
ing December twice, originates. Assuming that the last mention 
of that month ought to be erased, we shall have a total of 560 
days' work for a pair of horses in a year, or 1120 for one horse on 
a farm where 7 were kept, and according to the theory of 4 to 
100 acres arable, 9 at least ought to have been kept : these 9 (on 
Mr. Morton's hypothesis) being capable of doing 300 days' work 
apiece, or 27,000 days in all in the year. 
and for repairs of buildings, draining-tiles, timber and brushwood, coals, &c., in 
addition to the direct farmwork there detailed. Moreover, although the amount 
of traction on farni-roads seems as ably and fairly calculated as circumstances 
admit, perhaps it is rather understated for the rough, wet season to which so much 
of this work is practically postponed, — an error, if it be one, which is compensated 
by estimating that the cart weighs as much as its load, which is hardly the case 
with improved carts, my own 2-horse Croskill's not weighing much more than 
half the load they commonly carry. On the whole, then, the aggregate here 
given of work done in the year gives a total which it is not easy to amend. 
