to the Cultivation of the Land. 
199 
I'oi" laying on the coils of rope. The motion being ingeniously 
adapted from the endless rack of Baker's patent mangle. 
Messrs. Fisken's steam-ploughing mechanism, exhibited at 
Carlisle in 1855, is not now before the public in a practical 
form. The travelling windlass and rapid hemp cord have given 
way to the present wire-rope direct hauling ; but I have already 
referred to the suitability of their plan for driving a rotary 
digger. 
I can only allude in a word to the employment of traction or 
locomotive engines in cultivation ; as, notwithstanding the many 
experiments and great performances of Mr. Boydell's engine, 
Messrs. Tuxford's, and also of Mr. Blackburn's and Mr. Bray's 
engines, I believe that these ponderous machines are beginning 
to take their true place on the road or on the farm as steam- 
horses for carriage rather than tillage. On very level lands and 
with great improvement in the working parts, perhaps they may 
be able to travel and drag implements behind at a comparatively 
cheap cost. In Cuba, I believe, Messrs. Tuxford s Bo3dell en- 
gines have given satisfaction ; and certainly Mr. Burrell's Boydell 
engines have during the last few years hauled ploughs and culti- 
vators with immense power, and in some cases made excellent 
work. As locomotives on common roads, these inventions are 
treated of in the next part of this paper. 
This essay would be incomplete without a reference to the 
' Guideway Steam Agriculture ' of Mr. P. A. Halkett, of the 
Wyndham Club, and 80, Chancery Lane, London : — 
This system of cultivation, by which the whole series of the 
operations of agriculture have been performed by steam power, 
consists in laying down, at intervals of fifty feet or more, per- 
manent and parallel guideways or rails, by which a loco- 
motive cultivator, carrying the motive power, is supported and 
guided, and to the under-side of which" are attached the various 
implements to be used. On the headlands are other rails at 
right angles to the former, upon which a shunting or traversing 
carriage moves, by which means the cultivator is transferred 
from one set of rails to another, or is brought to the home- 
stead where the engines can be used for thrashing or other 
barn operations. In this so-called guideway system of agricul- 
ture, there being no weight bearing on the land, culture can be 
performed in any weather and state of the ground without injury, 
even on the heaviest clay soil, leaving it in a state of lightness 
impossible to arrive at, where the weight of men, implements, 
horses, or tractive power is constantly consolidating or poaching 
it; whilst, by consecutive ploughings in the same furrow, it can 
be cultivated to a depth hitherto unattainable, except by the 
costly operation of deep spade trenching ; and fresh soil to the 
