Tlie late Thomas Avelivg. 
357 
resistance " was simply a stimulant which goaded him to further 
exertion. He said, "There are, and always will be, people 
who receive efforts meant to improve their welfare as they do 
the medicines prescribed by their doctor. A disposition of 
this sort is inherited with other family traits." How often 
have I heard him enunciate this dictum, and act upon it too? 
I am not competent to follow Mr. Aveling's career as an 
agricultural engineer, therefore I must content myself with 
recording the bare facts. Having given up farming, he esta- 
blished works on a small scale at Rochester ; in 1856 he intro- 
duced the steam-plough to the notice of Kentish farmers, with 
such success that in 1858 he was presented with a valuable 
piece of plate, and a purse containing three hundred guineas, 
by the agriculturists of Kent in recognition of his exertions on 
their behalf. In his now proper business he scored his first 
public success by giving self-propulsion to the portable engine. 
The anomaly of a steam-engine being drawn to the site of its 
work by six horses he compared to "six sailing vessels towing 
a steamer," and pronounced, in his characteristic and energetic 
way, the arrangement as " an insult to mechanical science." In 
1859 he took out his first patent to overcome this defect ; he 
exhibited an engine constructed on his own principle at the 
Royal Agricultural Society's Show at Canterbury in 1860, 
together with several other agricultural implements, all made 
by other manufacturers, thus showing that then, although an 
inventor, he had not become a maker. He was, in fact, an 
improving dealer and not what, in after years, he was fond of 
calling himself — a " blacksmith." The catalogue of his Canter- 
bury exhibits was headed by a description of an Eight Horse- 
power Patent Locomotive Engine, invented by the Exhibitor, 
manufactured by Clayton, Shuttleworth and Co., Lincoln, " fitted 
with the Exhibitor's patent arrangement for locomotion and 
steerage, by which the whole set of machinery may be moved 
from farm to farm without horses." The Report of the Judges 
of Implements at that meeting contains the following notice of 
his stand : — " Thomas Aveling's stand of steam-engines, thresh- 
ing machines, elevators, horse-gearing, and other machinery, 
met our very high approval ; his universal safety-joint to his 
driving shafts is worthy of extensive patronage." Although 
very encouraging to a beginner, it is noteworthy that Mr. Ave- 
ling's first attempt to bring into notice a self-moving engine for 
agricultural purposes was passed over without mention by the 
Judges on that occasion. 
At Leeds, in 1861, Mr. Aveling's exhibits were confined to 
one of his patent locomotive engines, invented, im])rovcd, and 
manufactured by the Exhibitor, and to a threshing machine and 
