60 
The Involution of Agricultural Implements. 
Class II. — Seeding Implements. 
The first sowing-machine of which any record exists 
was invented by Joseph Locatelli, of Carinthia, and not only 
appears to have been successfully tried in 1662, but made in 
some numbers, and even exported to England, where an agent 
for its sale was appointed. Cooke’s drill, patented in 1783, was, 
however, the foundation of all the drills now in use, and the im- 
mediate predecessor of Salmon’s “ Bedfordshire,” and Smyth’s 
“Suffolk” drill, introduced about 1800. 
Sowing-machines fall naturally into the following classes : — 
] . Cup drills. 
2. Tooth and brush pinion 
drills. 
3. Disc drills. 
4. Chain drills. 
5. Force feed drills. 
6. Liquid manure drills. 
7. Potato planters. 
Mr. Allen, of the American Patent Office, indeed, in his 
digest of American seeding machinery, divides drills into thirty- 
five classes, and says that, before the fire of 1877, the Washing- 
ton Patent Office contained more than 3,000 models represent- 
ing patented improvements in seeding implements. It will, 
however, be sufficient for all practical purposes to detail the 
more, and sketch the less, important peculiarities of the seven 
classes of drills which have been named above. 
A good drill should, — First, deliver uniformly the same 
quantity of seed per unit of surface, whether travelling on level 
ground, along the side of a hill, or up and down hill. It should 
adapt itself not only to all kinds of seeds but to all conditions of 
such seeds. The quantity of seed sown per unit of surface 
should be precisely and easily regulable. 
Secondly, — the coulters should make the seed-fun-ow neither 
too deep nor too shallow, and the sides of this furrow should 
fall in easily upon the seed. 
Thirdly, — the steerage of the machine should be easy and 
accurate. 
First — Delivery. 
The well-known cup drill (Class l),now practically universal 
throughout Europe, should give, theoretically speaking, a per- 
fectly regular delivery if the cups were all of the same capacity 
and set at the same angle to the diameter of the cup wheel. 
In practice, however, these conditions are not easily obtainable, 
while, even if they were, the reaction of the cups on rough 
ground often throws a portion of their contents back into the 
seed-hopper. 
