at the York Meeting, 1 848. 
390 
" 2. The l)()dy of tlio cart placed down upon llio axle, or as 
near the f^round as will allow the load to be well tilted. 
''3. The wheels to run upon a cylindrical rim or trod, the 
arms or axles being straight. 
" The wheels uj)on the prize waggon arc made altogether of 
iron, and, although they appear strong and good, yet we think 
that in field work the soil will be liable in wet weather to dove- 
tail over the felloes, and even on grass land with a heavy load 
they are liable to the same defect." 
So much carting is required on every farm in the course of the 
year, and the expense of horse keep and prime cost of the carts 
themselves is so considerable, that it is a matter of no small im- 
portance that their best form, with a view to durability and 
lightness of draught, should be clearly ascertained and generally 
adopted. The Judges found fault more or less with all those 
exhibited at York ; it will therefore be advisable to revert to 
those principles of mechanics by which their construction was in 
the first instance regulated, but which are frequently found to 
have been widely departed from in consequence of the ignorance 
or forgelfulness of country wheelwrights of the rules by which 
they ought to be guided. The best form of the most important 
working parts shall, therefore, be successively considered, and 
the object of the writer will be to give the results of the mecha- 
nical questions involved in tlie inquiry in language which shall 
be intelligible to the general reader. 
Form of Wheels. — A perfectly flat wheel, or, technically 
sj)eaking, a wheel which is not dished, is the strongest whilst the 
cart is standing still, or moving on a perfectly level road, or, to 
speak more correctly, it is strongest so long as the cart preserves 
its horizontal position, because under such circumstances there 
can be no lateral pressure, and each spoke as it in turn receives 
the weight of the cart, receives it in a perpendicular position, in 
which, of course, it is capable of supporting the greatest weight. 
But in practice carts do not remain stationary, nor are roads 
accurately smooth and level, and no one can watch a cart tra- 
velling on even the best of roads without observing that one 
wheel or the other is continually rising over a slight elevation 
or sinking into a trifling hollow, and, consequently, that the cart 
never preserves a perfectly horizontal position for even a few 
yards at a time. This is strictly true of a good turnpike-road, but 
it applies with much more force to farm work, in the course of 
which carts have to cross ridge and furrow at all angles, and to 
travel on roads having ruts and holes of all sorts and sizes. It 
may, therefore, be assumed that a cart when in motion never 
long retains its horizontal position ; and this is a point of the 
greatest importance, because at each change of level the wheel 
