to the Cultivation of the Land. 
193 
round the pulley-wheels of a " rope-carrier," in which a weighted 
pulley, rising and falling according to the fluctuations in the 
tension of the rope, secures a steady strain for enabling power 
to be communicated to a travelling carriage, on which the 
eotary digger is placed. The engine and rone-carrier could be 
moved at intervals, as the work proceeded, by means of tem- 
porary wooden trams, or the engine might be kept stationary. 
The locomotive cultivating-carriage had a cylinder, with one or 
more smaller ones attached, these cylinders being studded with 
spades, knives, prongs, or teeth, as required ; and the operations 
contemplated included "cultivating, sowing, reaping, mowing, 
<lressing, ploughing, or other work required in agricultural 
business." 
Mr. Atkins stated at the Society of Arts, in February, 1856, 
that the space between the carriage and the engine might 
vary from 50 to 1500 yards, thus enabling the macliine or 
rotarv cultivator to work up and down the land without any 
obstruction : a thousand yards of land might be cultivated with 
10 cwt. of rope, with a 20 or 25-horse power engine, and the 
arrangement would be found of a most simple and inexpensive 
r haracter. At the Birmingham Meeting of the Institution of 
Mechanical Engineers, in April, 1857, Mr. Atkins described his 
cultivating tool as having rotating forks or spikes, breaking up 
and loosening the soil. He considered the best mode of propel- 
ling the machine would be "to have a large fixed engine of 20 
or even 30-horse power, set down in the centre of a farm; driving, 
by means of endless wire-ropes, extending to a great distance, 
and working at a high speed, so as to diminish the weight of 
rope required, the rope being carried on standards at some height 
from the ground, like a colliery-rope. This idea had been early 
suggested to him by seeing a rope-manufactory at Bristol, where 
a rope of two miles lengtli had been working constantly for two 
years, taking the power from a 10-horse engine, and driving 
various machines all down the walk for a mile distance." 
The method patented by Messrs. Fisken in .July, 1855, of 
propelling a travelling windlass and attached implements by 
means of rapidly-running endless hemp rope and a fixed wire- 
rope, is specially adapted for driving a rotary digger in situa- 
tions wliere the steepness of the fields precludes the employment 
of a locomotive engine. In June, 1856, Mr. Robert Roger, the 
manufacturer of Messrs. Fiskcn's apparatus shown at the Car- 
lisle Meeting, patented a mode of actuating a spiked roller or 
revolving digger by a pinion and chain-wtieel, set in motion by 
the spur-wheel attached to the winding-drums; and also another 
plan for adapting the fixed windlass system to work a similar 
travelling machine, with rotary cultivator, by direct hauling 
YOL. XX. " O 
