364 Five Years Progress of Steam Cultivation. 
(says a Buckinghamshire clay-farmer) " in a hot dry summer. 
By immense force, and tear and wear of horse-flesh, implements, 
and harness, 1 got it broken into lumps as big as horses' heads. 
These a cross-ploughing reduced one half; another ploughing 
got them down to cricket-balls ; Crosskill's clod-crusher brought 
them down to the size of walnuts, and then to sugar-knobs, to 
beans, to peas ; but they were hard fragments still, as unlike 
tilth as possible. But a single 'smashing up' (and perhaps a 
crossing before winter) kills the weeds in a dry autumn, and 
j)laces the land so under the influence of the winter's frost, that 
the soil in spring is as light and loose as the freest loam in the 
country. Masses which still retain the form of clods you may 
kick into a powder over the ground ; and ' stiff, adhesive clay ' 
now barely soils the boots that in other circumstances would 
gather 10 to 20 pounds of earth a-piece." It is clear, then, that 
the " revolution " in field practice which everybody expects from 
a steam-driven implement must consist, of necessity, in perfect- 
ing, expediting, and cheapening essential processes already in 
use ; or, if introducing novel modes of manipulation, doing this 
the better to carry out the same principles of tillage upon which 
the old tool-work was based. 
Dismissing, then, all chimerical notions from the subject, I 
propose to show that we now possess forms of steam-cultivating 
apparatus attaining these three points — 1, superior (pialitij in 
the work done ; 2, greater rajnditij, and 3, less cost of execu- 
tion, as compared with cultuie by animal powei\ And it 
follows from the foregoing considerations that future progi'ess 
(whether from improvements in mechanism of working imple- 
ments of traction, or from the success of a revolving digger), 
Avill merely render somewhat greater the profit already obtain- 
able through the services of the rope-drawn tine and share. 
Steam tillage is by no means " in its infancy," though its results 
may be as yet only dimly foreseen and' scantily realized ; as 
appears from a very simple but forcible consideration pu* by 
Air. J. C. Morton, in his report of the trials at York last year. 
" A 4-horse team and plough weigh more than 40 cwts. ; and all 
this goes trampling and sliding from end to end of the clay field 
that is being ploughed over every 10 or 12 inches of its width ; 
and thus of course a floor is formed beneath the staple, hindering 
drainage and the entrance of air, impeding the downward pene- 
tration of roots, (Sec, &c. We want a tool weighing not more 
tliat 4 or 5 cwts. for every foot in the width worked by it, carried, 
on wheels so as not to close the surface over which it travels, 
and driven by a power which shall not press upon the land that 
is being worked. All this wo have in the steam-driven ploughs 
and cultivators that were seen at work yesterday : the ploughs 
