296 
Steam-digging Machine. 
persuade men that it can be applied to the hundredth, 
as it was to convince them that it could be used for any 
purpose at all. So also, after railroads had been made 
of a length of 5 or 10 miles, and worked with great 
advantage for 150 years, nobody could be persuaded that 
they could be made 50 or 100 miles long with propor¬ 
tionate advantage. 
However, with respect to the Steam Plough, I 
apprehend that a fundamental mistake has been made, 
which lias been the main hindrance to the application 
of steam to tillage. Men are so accustomed to see 
land ploughed, that it appears that nobody has thought 
of asking himself why it is ploughed : the answer 
to this is, simply, because horses and bullocks cannot 
be taught to dig. Everybody knows that, among the 
many ways in which earth may be loosened and 
exposed to the air and rain, digging is preferable to 
ploughing,—and, indeed, effects that object in a more 
perfect manner than any other way yet discovered; and it 
is only that the cheapness of animal labour rnay be taken 
advantage of that men submit to use a much more im¬ 
perfect implement. Now, in entering upon the subject 
of tillage by steam, it should have first been considered, 
that as the spade was invented to suit human power, and 
the plough (though less perfect, yet as being more 
simple) to suit animal labour, so some other implement, 
perhaps totally distinct in its nature, might best suit the 
power of steam. This fundamental point seems never 
to have occurred to the inventors of steam ploughs. 
The fact is that the plough is peculiarly unsuitable and 
inconvenient if steam is to be used ; and, as it is at the 
same time inferior in effect to another well-known im¬ 
plement, it ought at once to be given up. It still remains 
a question whether a yet more effective and suitable 
operation than that of digging might, not be discovered. 
