IIG 
American Implements, and 
saving nf labour is efTected. And thus the house is completed 
and made habitable by the farmer and his sons, with perhaps no 
other help than that of a neighbour as handy as himself. 
On Aisiting such a farm a year or two later, what are we 
likely to observe? We shall, in the first place, probably be 
shocked by the execrable state of the road that leads us there, 
unless, indeed, we are so fortunate as to find a plank-road — a 
road formed of stout boards laid on longitudinal sleepers like a 
floor, and kept in repair by tolls — but this is a rare luxury. 
The northern farmers, trusting to their sleighs in winter to carry 
the crop to market, and having no fancy for taxation in any 
shape, are contented to leave their roads in the original state of a 
mere track through tlie forest, almost impassable in wet weather. 
^^oreover, in cases where there is every disposition to improve 
this track, it is not always so easy to do so, for few native 
Americans will undertake a species of labour which, in their 
minds, is associated with feelings of degradation. This difficulty 
has led to the contrivance of stone-breaking machines of many 
man-power ; one of these, driven by a G-horse power engine, I 
saw at work near Chicago, where it was breaking up the Xiagara 
limestone, which forms the substratum there. It consists of two 
heavy iron cylinders, studded with rows of knobs of about two 
inches projection ; the knobs on the one corresponding with tlie 
intervals on the other as they revolve in opposite directions. It 
«as comminuting the soft limestone as fast as two men could 
clear it, and a tnavelling platform on bands was being prepared 
to facilitate this labour. This implement was originally invented, 
and has long been in use, for the purpose of breaking up the 
Pennsvlvanian anthracite, and the greater part of the five million 
tons of this hard coal which is annually raised there passes between 
its iron teeth at a royalty of 1 cent per ton. It would, no doubt, 
break up the oolite and coral rag, and almost any schistose rock, 
but whether it could be economically employed in England is 
another matter. There is another stone-breaker capable of 
breaking up the hardest granite, hornblende, or quartz : it con- 
sists of a ponderous mass of cast-iron, against the jierpendicular 
face of which another mass of an elbow shape is moved to and 
fro on a toggle or knuckle-joint ; the motion is slight, but the 
power sufficient to crack the hardest nodules and boulders like 
nuts, and, as they break up, the fragments fall through a 
gauge. One of these, employed on the public works of the new 
reservoir at New York, is worked by a 12-horse power engine, 
and is said to answer well. 
Having now fairly arrived at the farm, tlie first oljject to arrest 
our attention will perhaps be a railway horse-power, though 
these may have been already noticed at any railway station, 
