Five Years Progress of Steam Cultivation. 365; 
employed weigliinj; not more that 5 to 7 cwts. per furrow, the cul- 
tivators from 4 to 5 cwts. per foot of width, and both are carried 
on large wheels at wide intervals, thus traversing the field but 
once to ever}' 4 or 6 feet width. The engines driving them 
either travel along the headland, or they stand in one spot, or 
altoffether out of the field. In both cases the tools can be drawn 
with wonderful effect through sun-baked clay which horses could 
not touch ; in both cases (supposing the land to be fit for horse- 
work) the mischief done by drawing a heavy tool across the land 
that wants loosening and cultrvating is reduced to a minimum ; 
while for speed of work, in order to the full use of the short times 
in a year when clays are fit for cultivation, superior quality of 
tillage, and its much lower total cost, as compared with horse- 
labour, the advantages of steam-power are in. both cases beyond 
a question." 
In selecting proofs from the great mass of evidence which is 
cumulating every day, I may, first of all, take steam culture as 
represented in 
The Trial Fields at Worcester. 
Without recapitulating the details and descriptions which have 
appeared in this Journal — in my ' Account of Steam-Cultiva- 
tion ' (vol. XX.), in j\Ir. Frere's paper ' On the Present Aspect of 
Steam-Cultivation' (vol. xxi.), and in the Stewards' and Judges' 
Reports of Chester, Warwick, Canterbury, Leeds, and Battersea 
Meetings (see the vols, for the years respectively) — I will very 
briefly describe the several forms of apparatus now competing for 
public patronage. 
Some systems familiar to visitors of our "country meetings" 
have been abandoned. No such thing as a locomotive engine 
travelling over the land, yoked to one or more traction-imple- 
ments, appeared at Worcester. And though a locomotive- 
engine, delving the soil by rotary spades, has been exhibited at 
the agricultural exposition of Lille, our English inventors have 
at present no real embodiment in wood and metal of the me- 
chanical idea so philosophically and pictorially placed before us 
in the 'Chronicles of a Clay Farm.' Steam-tillage in 1863 con- 
sists in dragging a traction-implement Avith a wire rope (or a 
substitute for it), hauled either by a stationary motive-power, or 
a motive-power moveable along the headland. 
Leaving out of view the so-called " traction " engines, or 
highway and farm-road locomotives, we find " entered " in the 
Worcester Catalogue the steam-culture machinery of thirteen 
different exhibitors. 
Mr. Thomas Beards, of Stow, near Buckingham, showed a 
plough adapted for any system of haulage. A rectangular iron 
