G18 
Abstract Report of Agricultural Discussions, 
to make a few remarks in the hope that others will follow me. I 
should like to hear the opinion of practical men on the question, 
whether land should be ploughed or cultivated by steam. It strikes 
me that you will get more by the latter process than by the inversion 
of the soil. The difficulty of cultivating by horse-power is, that you 
cannot break up the land at a sufficient depth, nor shatter the rough 
clods in such a manner as to eradicate the weeds ; steam gives us the 
pace and the power to do all this. You have then a belter chance 
of cleaning your land, and rendering it available for the benefits to be 
derived from aeration and the water that falls upon it. Without in any 
v,-ay disparaging Mr. Fowler's system, which I have always regarded 
as most superior, I may say that at Bedford, the other day, Howard's 
cultivator, when working on a piece of strong clay land in wheat 
stubble that had not been disturbed since the harvest, and contained a 
good deal of twitch, thistles, docks, coltsfoot, and other weeds in 
abundance — went nine inches deep, travelled at a great pace, and 
turned up and broke the clods in a wonderful manner. Instead of 
cutting the weeds, as is done by the ploughshare, it tiu'ned them up 
completely. The only weed it did not shake out satisfactorily was 
the coltsfoot, which it is very hard to deal with at all on clay lands. 
Now, I should like to know whether, in the opinion of practical men, 
the cultivating system is not likely to a great extent to take the place 
of the system of inversion. 
From what I saw of the crops in the neighbourhood of Bedford, I 
can quite believe that steam cultivation must largely increase the 
produce of corn, the wheat crops cultivated by steam appearing to bo 
in a highly satisfactory state. With regard to the growth of clover, I 
should like to know whether other persons' experience agrees ■with my 
own. I find that there is no crop so difiicult to grow as clover. 
This year, in one of my fields, there was a very nice plant all over it 
after harvest, but now except upon two acres it is entirely gone. The 
clover upon Messrs. Howard's clay land was exceedingly good ; I 
never saw the plant better set, or thicker. Whether that arises from 
the land being better cultivated, or whether they have not grown it 
GO frequently there, I am not prepared to say. 
Mr. Fkere : Liebig, in his last work, the ' Laws of Husbandry,' 
appears to regard clover as a deep-feeding plant, and to attribute its 
failure generally to the exhaustion of the available constituents of ^tho 
luidersoil. The statement of Jlr. Ruck was therefore distinctly in 
accordance vdih Liebigs teaching, which was probably founded in 
truth, though it did not account for the going off the plant at an early 
stage of its growth. 
The Chaiuman : I feel greatly obliged to Mr. Ruck for the infor- 
mation he has given us to-day on this most interesting subject. At 
the same time I would repeat tlie observation which I made some years 
ago, when Mr. Par lees's system of drainage was first introduced, that wo 
must look to the different soils and situations, and the different state of 
tlie land, before we can la}' down any rule for the adoption of one system 
or another. In the early part of his lecture Mr. Ruck stated tliat he 
put every drain into an open ditch, and I think I understood him to 
