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‘SOWING-MACHINES. 
fordshire : those with six coulters are considered 
the best for heavy or hilly land ; those with eight 
coulters for light and level lands. The Bedford- 
shire drill, which has been thus described, is an 
exceedingly useful little machine for sowing corn ; 
but it is not suited for the combined purpose of 
sowing manure and cornat the same time, as the 
weight of the additional box, when first charged 
with manure, would be so great as to press the 
coulters much deeper than is advantageous for de- 
positing the seed, and when nearly emptied, the 
converse would probably be the case. The total 
weight of the machine, with the additional load- 
ed manure-box, would also render it unwieldy 
for a man to turn at the ends of the land. Robert 
Maynard, of Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, an 
ingenious mechanist, to whom the agriculturists 
are indebted for several improvements in drills 
and other machinery, has, by the simple con- 
trivance of placing a roller immediately in ad- 
vance of each coulter, remedied this defect, as 
these rollers not only prepare the surface of the 
soil for the most favourable operation of the coul- 
ters, but at the same time secure their pene- 
trating the ground to a uniform depth. In his 
drill the seed-box is a small compartment in the 
manure-box ; its total weight, when loaded with 
about five bushels of manure, the quantity it is 
calculated to hold, is not much more than that 
of an ordinary corn-box; and by placing it some- 
what more in advance than the common seed- 
box, the operator is relieved from any undue 
weight, which is thus thrown upon the wheels.” 
Grounsell’s drop-drill was patented in June 
1839. It deposits seed-corn or pulse-seeds and 
manure at intervals in drills, and can be made to 
vary the distances between the intervals at plea- 
sure. A circular iron-ring is fixed about midway 
between the nave and the rim of the carriage 
wheel ; a number of holes in this ring carries a 
series of studs, which may be varied according 
to the length of the desired intervals; and the 
valves for the delivery of the seeds and the ma- 
nure are opened by the successive studs in revo- 
lution, and immediately shut again when each 
stud passes. The seeds and the manure, also, 
are worked into the funnels, not as in other drills 
with cups, but with projecting arms or shovels. 
Hornsby’sdrop-drill was patented in November, 
1839, and performs the same kind of function as 
Grounsell’s, but with a widely different mechan- 
ism. “The manner of regulating the delivery is 
by having a coulter of a peculiar form inside, in 
which a circular box revolves on an axle which 
passes through one side. This box is divided 
into compartments closed by small doors, which 
are kept shut~ by -a spring to each ; the compart- 
ments in the box are supplied through a series of 
funnels, the end of the lower one entering one 
side of the box below the centre. On the ma- 
chine being moved forwards, this box revolves 
by means of appropriate cog-wheels ; and as each 
spring arrives at the ground, the door to which 
285 
it is attached opens, and the contents of that 
compartment are deposited, to be again replaced 
when it arrives at the part of its rotation at the 
end of the funnel, and so on successively.” 
Garrett’s drop-drill is a modification of the 
drill for general purposes, so constructed as to 
deposit seed and manure at intervals on ridges or 
flat ground ; and—as well as the general drill— 
it comprises a number of sizes and varieties, 
“The merits of these drills,” say Messrs. Garrett, 
“are important in economizing expensive ma- 
nures, as one-third of the quantity generally used 
will now suffice for the crop. By this novel and 
effectual contrivance of dropping the seed and 
manure in heaps, at intervals, every plant is 
nourished with its full proportion of the manure. 
Prior to our invention, no drills were made but 
what deposited in a continual stream, or dropped 
the seed and manure out of the pipes to- 
gether mixed in one heap, so that when strong 
manures were used, they were almost certain to 
spoil the germ of the seed, and prevent its vege- 
tating, thus offering at once a great and fatal 
objection to their use. ‘To remedy this our pre- 
sent patent has been taken out, and is for cor- 
rectly dropping the manure and seed separately 
at any required intervals, so that in one process 
the manure is dropped at. intervals, at any re- 
quired depth below the seed and covered with 
mould; then follows the seed-conductor, and 
lodges in any minute quantity patches directly 
above the manure, leaving a small portion of 
mould between them. By the new steerage ma- 
chinery which is applied to these drills, and which 
acts as a fore-carriage to the implement, a man 
may keep the rows of corn perfectly parallel with 
the preceding course of the drill ; 
by the man holding the handle and keeping the 
small fore-wheel in the track of the preceding 
large one ; this, with a little practice, is very easy, 
and will amply repay by the regularity afforded 
to the crops, besides the facility it affords for the 
horse-hoe going between those rows of plants 
where the drill joins in its different courses 
through the field.” The figure of the drill for 
general purposes in Plate LX. represents that 
drill set for turnips, the two levers on the right 
hand being to drop the manure and seed, and the 
three on the left to drill them in a continual 
stream,—and it is shown in these two ways in 
order to illustrate more clearly the merits of their 
respective plans ; but, of course, when the imple- 
‘ment is in use, all the levers are either used to 
drop, or all to drill in a line. 
Rham’s sowing-machine—invented by the late 
Rev. W. L. Rham of Winkfield, and patented in 
November, 1841—is rather a dibbler than a drill ; 
yet it is suited alike to wheat and pulse and some 
other crops, and was designed by the inventor so 
to drilland dibble seed upon flat and well-pre- 
pared land that any field sown by it, no matter 
how extensive, should present the neatness and 
regularity of a highly finished garden; and it is 
this is done 
