410 Five Years Progress of Steam Cultivation. 
expense to be 6O5. a-day (time of removal being charged at the 
same sum as when ploughing, seeing that horses are not needed 
if you use a locomotive machine), it costs you lOd.per acre more to 
till the same number of acres in four fields than it does if in one. The 
loss by diminutive inclosures, owing to undue frequency of " turn- 
ings," is equally serious. Suppose the pace of the implement to be 
3 miles per hour, or 4 chains per minute, and the time consumed 
in turning at the end to be half a minute ; if a field be 12 chains 
in length, the journey occupies 3 minutes, the further time for 
turning amounts to a sixth of this ; so that for 6 days of actual 
ploughing another whole day is wasted. But if the field be 
24 chains in length, the journey (supposing the pace to continue 
the same, as a mere fraction of additional power is required for 
the extra length of a rope well carried) will take 6 minutes, and 
the half-minute for turning is only one-twelfth of this ; so that 
for 6 days of actual work only an additional half-day will be 
wasted. With the implement travelling at a rate which should 
command 6 acres per day, you plough, with the short furrow, 
half an acre per day less than with the long furrow. In other 
words, you must spend 13 weeks in doing work that would 
occupy but 12 weeks, had you the longer instead of the shorter 
fields ; and your steam culture (at 60s. per day) will conse- 
quently cost 9(/. per acre more money. It seems, then, that, on 
a farm furnishing some hundred fair days' work in a year, 16 or 17 
days more may be needed to do the same tillage, and no less a 
sum than 50/. per annum be saddled upon the employer of a 
steam plough, soleh/ from the excessive number of turnings and re' 
movals necessitated by small inclosures. 
I need scarcely add that this is nothing like all the loss in- 
volved. The risk of breakages of machinery is to a consider- 
able extent proportionate to the number of signallings, stoppings, 
and startings in a day, and the number of journeys from one 
field to another; slowness and delay in the tillage and seeding 
become apparent in the crops ; and a doubling of the proper 
extent of headlands eats off a considerable share from the area 
of perfect light tilth on the farm. Add to these considera- 
tions the thousand -and-one injuries suffered by any farmer wh» 
is hampered by the miles of weed-collecting, vermin-shelter- 
ing, crop-destroying fences with which some estates are honey- 
combed, and we see how reasonable it is that the steam 
plough, above all other implements, demands "a clear field and 
no favour," either to rabbits outside a warren or trees outside a 
wood. Steam culture is truly a valuable assistance to the farmer 
of medium and even light land : it is a means of insuring good 
profit upon many strong soils ; and the consequently improved 
position of a tenantry, together with an amelioration of the farms 
