Five Years Progress of Steam Cultivation, 
415 
little farm, seeing that the engine has done tenfold more thrashing 
and ploughing by contract for other people than it has done for 
Mr. Smith himself. However, he puts these items at 15/., making 
a total yearly expenditure of 46Z. 19s. for steam cultivation. If 
we suppose a farmer of the same area of heavy land as that of 
Mr. Smith to earn nothing at all by letting out his machinery, 
and calculate interest at 5 per cent., and depreciation at 10 per 
cent, (as in the tables already given), the outlay due to so small 
a farm will be much greater. The price of the apparatus to 
customers is as follows: — Engine, 230/.; windlass, 110/.; 1400 
yards of steel rope, 61/. ; two cultivators, combined drill and 
cultivator, and license, 108/. : total, 509/. Fifteen per cent, 
upon this is 76/. 7s. ; and if we deduct the 6/. 7s. for the use of 
the engine in thrashing the farm crops, the remaining 70/., added 
to the 46/. 19s. working expenses, makes a total yearly outlay of 
116/. 19s. for steam cultivation. 
What is Mr. Smith's annual saving by the displacement of 
teams? Six horses used to work hard to "farm his land 5 inches 
deep, and keep it in a rather rough state ; " now he cannot half 
employ three horses (they labour, in fact, 43 days upon the land) j 
and the maintenance of the three horses saved, with their imple- 
ments, team-men, &c., reckoned at 45/., amounts to 135/. per 
annum. The direct money profit, then, of substituting steam for 
horse power on 112 acres of strong land, is 88/. Is., if only a 
share of the interest and depreciation of apparatus be charged 
to the farm (which, of course, is most reasonable, besides being 
the actual fact in Mr. Smith's case), and it is 18/. Is. if the whole 
burden of these items be saddled upon such a small holding. 
What is the gain by increase of produce ? The Woolston 
farm has been always open to public inspection ; the magnificent 
crops produced each year since the commencement of the system 
have been viewed and reported upon by good judges, and com- 
pared with the crops of neighbouring farms. That the evidently 
large augmentation of yield on land now made (by only one til- 
lage operation for each crop) as clean as a garden, has been derived 
from steam culture alone, has never been doubted. Mr. Smith 
declares that his manure consists of " straw and water ;" that is, 
the straw grown on the farm, trodden down, and returned to the 
fields in a partially decomposed state ; that the corn and oilcake 
consumed have been trivial in quantity, only two or three cows 
and about a dozen pigs of 160 lbs. each having been fed in the 
year, except the sheep eating off roots, and these have had only 
" a few " oats ; while the three horses, being but half employed, 
have not requii'ed oats for a considerable portion of the year. 
Frequent visitors to Woolston confirm these statements in 
VOL. XXIV. 2 E 
