to the Cultivation of the Land. 
221 
Staftbrd shire .. .. Lord Hathcrton, Tcddcsley. 
Warwick .. .. itr. J. Broadhead, Twycross. 
Wiltshire .. .. Mr. J. IS. Slarkcy, Spye Park, Cliippcnhaiu. 
Worcestershire .. Mr. J. Siaitli, liuiiibleton. 
„ .. .. Mr. Ilandall, Chadbury, 
... Mr. G. Humphries, Purshore. 
Yorkshire .. .. Mr. Coxilson, Drax Hall, Selhy. 
,, .. .. Mr. P. Stevenson, Painton, Tliirsk. 
Ireland Mr. P. Nascn (Jajigin, Pally Piehard, 
Middlcton, County Cork. 
Scotland Maniuis of StafVord I'or his Scotcli Estate. 
Favourable as have been the results detailed, and equally 
satisfactory as may have been the experience of others nmonjr 
this list of asriculturists, yet the evidence in some cases would 
tell against the mechanical arrangements, as involving too much 
labour, great loss of power, and excessive wear and tear. And 
some farmers, again, while failing to meet with the facilities 
they had anticipated from other examples, are persevering, in 
spite of frequent and delaying breakages (which, indeed, teach 
their men liandiness in " splicing "), and striving to work turn- 
over ploughs (still found indispensable on a majority of soils), 
with an apparatus not qualified to do so economically. There 
is no doubt that the difference between careful and reckless 
management, as well as the varying merit of the mechanical 
details, and of the quality of the rope supplied, have tended to 
make steam-cultivation cither profitable or too costly. 
I have visited the farm of Mr. Bird, of Littywood, near Penk- 
ridge, between Wolverhampton and Stafford, where one of Mr. 
Fowler's steam-ploughs has been adopted. The soil varies 
from a hard red-brown conglomerate of chi}- and pebbles, stiffened 
in the ancient days by enormous applications of " kag marl " 
from the great pits which still gape in every field with openings 
more than 20 feet deep, to lighter land where the gravel jire- 
dominates. Bare fallows were customary, but are giving way to 
a more profitable growth of mangold, turnips, &c., partiallv 
eaten off by sheep. The fashion was to plougli in " five-bolt 
butts," that is, small lands or stetches of ten furrows each ; and 
the work being thus all " cops " and " reanes," not only was 
there a waste of ground from such a redundance of water-furrows, 
ljut there was a great loss of time in ploughing-, by having to 
gather up the land. 
By means of good pipe-drainage, o or 4 feet deep, Mr. 
Bird, who farms (iOO acres, only a small proportion of which 
is pasture, has been able to practise ploughing on the flat, 
with the result of a considerable increase of yield in his 
crops, in spite of the taunts and forebodings of neighbouring 
