224 
Application of Steam Power 
As the season was far advanced when the above facts were as- 
certained, Mr. Bird has ploughed only about 20 acres more, or 
90 altogether ; and he is having cultivator-tines attached to the 
ploughing-franie, ready for working up fallows this spring. 
The next ilhisti ation of tlie worth of the steam-plough embraces 
results on a stiil larger scale. 
Mr. Thomas H. Redman, of Overtown, near Swindon, farms 
on tlie hills in the vicinity of the chalk downs, but though you 
see fine turnips and Suedes growing, and the spade finds chalk 
rubble and pebbles at 5 to 15 inches below the surface, there 
are plenty of indications savouring strongly of a heavy soil ; a 
considerable brer^dth of bare fallows ; the ground light-coloured, 
but hard and brittle in dry weather or stony like concrete ; and, 
when wetted by a shower, greasy, slippery, or sticky, like bird- 
lime, making heavy work alike for the anticjue wooden plough 
of the neighbourhood or the steel mould-board of Howard's 
modern one. A^aturally drained by the soft rock beneath, this 
forms a rich, unctuous soil, tiresome in wet weather, and 
" iiiauly " enough under tlie feet of the ploughman, but requiring 
only a greater depth and perfection of tillage, and freedom from 
the kneading tread of the team, (solidifying a mass already too 
consolidated,) to produce far greater yields than are at present 
raised, and become no longer a costly, ])ut a grateful calcareous 
cla}'. On 430 acres arable, 7 ploughs are requisite, and the 
team kept to work them consists of 13 horses and 13 oxen ; 3 
horses or 4 oxen plougliing a furrow 4^ or 5 inches deep. 
It is quite possible that the powerful high-priced horses used \,\ 
Mr. Kedman might be exchanged, with mechanical advantage, for 
more active and naturally quick-stepping horses; but still it will 
remain true that excessively heavy work has to be done, for 1 
myself tested the diaught of a Howard's iron plougli Viith steel 
mould-board, finding it to be in two fields G cwt. for a furrow 
10 inches wide and G inches deep, and in two other fields no 
less than 10 cwt. for a furrow 10 inches wide and 7 deep. 
Tiie frost was out of the ground when these trials were made, 
l)ut the labourers declared tliat the work went far easier tlian is 
frequently the case. 
Tiie customary allowance to a tenant for one ploughing is 
86'., IO5., or 12*'. an acre ; but it evidently costs much more, 
and, after all, the work is most imperfectly and miserably 
done. The winter ploughing Mr. Redman estimates at IGs. per 
acre, ret koning horse-keep at 2.9. a head per day. However, as 
eacli I'.orse has 1^ bushels of oats per week, w ith wheat-chalT, 
and 1 A cwt. of li.iy, I should take tlie daily cost of a horse at 
2s. Gf/., making the work considerably dearer. Ploughing by oxen, 
at the rate of 4 acres a w eek for each team of four, he has carefully 
