428 
Steam Culture. 
use. Moreover, where the gentry still occupy the old lialls, the 
timber has been maintained with special vigilance ; and where 
the cold and damp of the spot has driven them to remove, the 
parish in which they had lived has too often become one of the 
most neglected, because one of the least attractive, in the district. 
These influences have in like manner acted upon the state of the 
roads ; or, rather, the natural difficulties which stood in the way 
of road-making first contributed to the removal of the proprietor, 
and in da3'S of greater exertion the proprietor's absence withdrew 
the stimulus which was required to overcome these difficulties. 
For such reasons is it that those districts whei-e the presence 
of the steam-cultivator is most required are too often those least 
prepared to receive it ; and even if, for argument's sake, it be 
admitted that this method of cultivation is not yet sufficiently 
])erfected and matured to warrant an immediate purchase, still it 
is important that attention should be specially directed to the 
subject, that the owner of strong soils may note the rate of pro- 
gress which it is making, and compare that advance with his 
own more complicated task of improvement, and ask himself 
whether the new cultivator will not be in working order before 
his estate is ready to give it a becoming reception. 
And if it be asked what is the progress of the steam-plough, — it 
may be shoAvn, to speak only of its increased power, that — whereas 
at Boxted it seemed content to grapple with 2-horse work, at the 
maximum rate of 7 acres per day — at Canterbury it made light 
of 4-horse work at the rate of 11 acres, and executed that which 
was impracticable for horse-power at the maximum rate of 6 
acres per day, drawing, if we may trust the dynamometer, at a 
much more rapid rate than horses could attain, three ploughs, 
uphill and four down, with a furrow which it would require six 
horses to turn at their own pace. 
But if these heavy soils had the worst of starting-points in this 
race of improvement, it must by no means be inferred that 
nothing has yet been done for them, or that blame is necessarily 
due where a good deal remains to be done. On such estates, 
farm-houses, homesteads, cottages, drains, fences, and roads, were 
all pretty much of a piece, and all required attention, so that the 
task of setting them to rights was the work of years, if not lives. 
If we look around, we may easily find farms to represent every 
stage of transition, from the status of the eighteenth century to 
that which now calls for the steam-plough to put the finishing 
stroke to its development. 
The brick-kiln (itself the creature of railroad extensions and 
revised taxation) often lay at the root of this progress ; that 
arterial drainage, which ought to have gone hand in hand with 
it, being too often baulked by untoward circumstances. With 
