4:12 Fite Years Progress of Steam Cultivation. 
up. The Duke of Satlierland, at Trentham, is permanently 
inserting strong larcii or oak posts in the hedgerows around his 
fields ; the posts are 3 to 4 feet in the ground, 1 foot out, and at 
distances of 30 feet apart ; a moveable chain of this length or 
a little more will be easily lifted from one brace of posts to the 
next, and the ploughman can hook the snatch-block in a fresh link 
of the chain every time the implement arrives at the headland, 
thus dispensing with an anchor-man. There are shallow soils 
upon rock which the travelling disc-anchor also penetrates and 
lays hold of with difficulty. ^Ir. Marjoribanks has chalkv steep 
hill-side fields, where the " self-acting " anchorage has to be 
lashed to hedgerow trees to keep it in position. 
The steam-plough " in its infancy " was greeted with the 
derisive monition, " gently over the stones but these, with 
other obstacles, are being skilfullv surmounted. Upon the 
intractable Weald, with its copsewood, zigzag lanes, and awk- 
ward wooded ravines between small arable fields, Mr. Thurlow 
of Baysham Park, ]vlr. Hubbard of Beeding, and Mr. Morgan 
of The Thome, employ the stationarv engine with success. !Mr, 
Morgan has thoroughly overset aU the troubles and breakages 
occasioned by foul, rough land, filled with tree-roots. !Mr. 
Alison, on the Hainault Farms, has worked the moveable engine 
in spite of breakages from land-fast roots, and with tune the roots 
of the old forest rot and disappear. !Manv steam ploughmen 
have met with very excessive breakages from flints and other 
stony impediments ; but the deeplv-rooting powerful steam- 
grubber itself loosens and dislodges most of them, so that a 
second or third deep stirring or ploughing will have few stones 
to crack skifes and shares. Mr. Fowler supplies an immensely 
strong grubber purposely for upturning boulders (just as he 
supplies a mole-draining implement that drains 30 inches deep 
with fine effect, and will form drains even 4 feet deep, but which 
1 have not space to describe) ; and Mr. Williams, of BaVdon, 
has shown how to tear up hedges and fell trees by aid of the 
steam-engine. The Earl of Leicester has encountered difficulties 
of another kind. On soft " slob " land newlv won from the 
tides, and utterly without roads, his engine pulled itself along 
over rows of faggots, and the anchors had to l>e weighted and 
blocked to prevent them from dragging. 
As for hilly farms, there are undoubtedly fields to be found so 
steep in every direction, that no side has an inclination sufficiently 
moderate for the moveable engine to travel on. Here, of course, 
the stationary- engine must Ix; resorted to ; for the wire rope will 
pull an implement safely and effectuallv not only wherever horses 
could draw it, but up and down slopes where no horse can find 
a f<x)t-hold. But such extremely precipitous fields arc com- 
