STEAM PLOWING. 
19 
STEAM PLOWING, 
We subjoin some excellent suggestions from 
C. W. Hoskyns, on the subject of steam plowing, 
which we find in a late number of the Agricultur¬ 
al Gazette. That a wide departure is to be made 
'from the present mode of plowing, whenever 
the steam engine shall be substituted, we have 
not the slightest doubt. There is a serious in¬ 
jury to the subsoil from the use of the plo\v> as 
there is a pressure upon it equal to the weight 
of the implement, the entire superincumbent 
furrow to be lifted, and the force required for 
dividing the uplifted mass of earth from the 
stationary portion below. In some fields that 
have long been subjected to cultivation, at uni¬ 
form depth, the surface of the subsoil has near¬ 
ly the density of a stratum of rock. This op¬ 
poses a serious obstacle to the progress of roots, 
and materially lessens the growth and amount 
of the crop. 
There is a conservative or counteracting ef¬ 
fect produced at or near the surface, by the 
action of frosts and the elements, by which the 
particles of the soil are so effectually separated, 
that when dug from a hole and again, (however 
carefully and lightly,) returned to it, they fail 
to fill up the space before occupied. But we 
believe this is seldom the case with the subsoil. 
The principle suggested by Mr. Hoskyns, has, 
as an experiment only, (for we are not aware 
of its adoption as a practical matter,) been for 
some years introduced into France and per¬ 
haps into England and elsewhere; and we have 
had a small cultivator constructed on the same 
principle, which, however, has justly failed to 
command any favorable attention. Thus we 
are left just as far from any utilitarian discovery 
as before. But to the quotation. Mr. H. says : 
I hold it to be an idea fundamentally erroneous 
to attempt to combine steam machinery with 
the plow. And I hope I am not presumptuous 
in repeating my conviction, that, until the idea of 
the plow and in a word, of all draught-cvXliwa.- 
tion is utterly abandoned, no effective progress 
will be made in the application of steam to the 
tilling of the earth. I repeat what I have said 
before, that plowing is a mere contrivance for 
applying animal power to tillage. Get out of ani¬ 
mal power, and you leave plowing behind 
altogether. Get into steam power, and you have 
no more to do with the plow, than a horse has to 
do with a spade. It is no essential whatever of 
cultivation that it should be done by the traction 
of the implement. Spade work is perpendicular 
Horse work is horizontal. Machine work is cir¬ 
cular. 
Whoever would now dream of retaining the 
form of the hand flail in the threshing machine, 
or that of the oar in a steam ship, or of putting 
the piston rod to work at the lever end of a 
pump handle ? Yet doubtless these bastard at¬ 
tempts were all made in their day, till the sev¬ 
eral inventors had come to see in turn that 
“ ’ Tis good to be off with the old love 
Before ye be on wi’ the new!” 
I am aware that I am repeating myself, una¬ 
voidably, in all this; but no one can imagine, 
without trying it, the difficulty of making the 
mechanical part of the question intelligible to 
the agriculturist, and the agricultural part to 
the machinist. The steam engine has no taste 
whatever for straight draught. He is a revolu¬ 
tionist, in the most exact sense of the word. He 
works by revolution; and by revolution only 
will he cut up the soil into a seed bed, of the 
pattern required, be it coarse or fine. And that , 
it is my firm belief, he will be seen doing at a 
handsome average, before a very large portion 
of another century shall have passed over our 
heads. Why should it not be ? Why should not. 
a strip, or lair, of earth be cut up into fine tilth at 
one operation , (and sown and covered in, too,) as 
easily as a circular saw cuts a plank into saw¬ 
dust? As to employing a steam engine to turn 
a drum, to wind up a rope, to drag a plow, to 
turn up a furrow, and all this as a mere prelude 
for an after amusement to all the ancient tribe 
of harrows, scufflers, rollers, and clod crushers, 
to do supplementally the real work of cultiva¬ 
tion, it reminds one of “ the house that Jack 
built.” One can hardly blame the iron ribs of 
any respectable boiler for bursting at the first 
pull at a task so utterly at variance with every 
known law of mechanical advancement, so of¬ 
fensive to the economics, I had almost said the 
very ethics of the steam engine. 
I trust I may be forgiven for so boldly speak¬ 
ing ; but I am sorry to think of one useful shil¬ 
ling being thrown away in the attempt, unprofit¬ 
able, even if successful, of harnessing steam 
with horse harness, to do horse work in a 
horse’s way; the implement itself, whose wretch¬ 
ed work it is put to accomplish, being a tool 
with the sentence of death written upon it, (be it 
as ancient as it may,) for its tyranny to the sub¬ 
soil, which bears the whole burden and injury 
of its laborious blundering path. 
I say the plow has sentence of death written 
upon it, because it is essentially imperfect. What 
it does is little towards the work of cultivation; 
but that little is tainted by a radical imperfec¬ 
tion-damage to the subsoil, which is bruised 
and hardened by the share, in an exact ratio 
with the weight of soil lifted, plus that of the 
