STEAM. 
Its leaves are lanceolate and about 3 inches long, 
and lessen gradually to both ends; its stem is 4 
or 5 inches high, and divides into many spread- 
ing branches; and its flowers grow on short 
‘spikes, and profusely cover the branches, and 
have a whitish blue colour, and bloom in July 
and August.—The two-nerved sea-lavender, Sta- 
tice binervosa, is an evergreen herbaceous indigen 
of the chalky cliffs of England, about a foot high, 
and carrying blue flowers from June till Septem- 
ber, but is rare-—The dwarf sea-lavender, Statice 
nana, is also a rare, evergreen, herbaceous, blue- 
flowered indigen, but has a height of only about 
3 inches. 
The broad-leaved sea-lavender, Statice macro- 
phylla, was introduced to Britain a few years 
ago from Madeira, and is one of the largest and 
most showy of the exotic species. It is a very 
desirable greenhouse plant, and has rapidly come 
into great celebrity; but, even in a greenhouse, 
is impatient of the occasional rigours of our cli- 
mate when forming its young leaves late in 
autumn. The leaves are large, obtuse, and 
spathulate, and taper at the base, and sit closely 
round the erect shrubby stem, and constitute a 
dense, handsome, tufty mass of foliage; the 
flower-stem forms a large branching panicle, two 
or three feet high, with branches and peduncles 
of a flattened shape and broadest upwards; and 
the flowers are borne in an aggregated position 
on the ulterior ramifications of the branches,— 
each with a flat, spreading, rich purple blue 
calyx, which unfolds five white and somewhat 
fugitive petals, but remains itself on the plant 
for months. 
STAVESACRE. See Larkspur. 
STEADING. See Farm-Buixprines. 
STEAM. The hot elastic vapour of water. A 
notice of its many economical uses, and of the 
mighty achievements which have been effected 
by it in modern times as a motive power, and of 
the vast accessions of convenience and produce 
and wealth which it now brings to man in traffic 
and manufacture, would possess surpassing in- 
terest, but does not belong to the design of our 
work. Its principal actual uses hitherto, in mat- 
ters connected with the garden and the farm, 
are the heating of hothouses, the cooking of food 
for cattle, and the driving of the machinery of 
the farmery; and its principal prospective use, 
in connexion with the cultivation of the soil, is 
the impelling of implements for ordinary field 
tillage, for subsoil-ploughing, and for the break- 
ing up of bogs and other waste lands. See the 
articles Hornousr, Srram-Eneine, Srramine- 
Apparatus, and Steam-Proucuine. “That the 
steam-engine,” said the author of four papers on 
the application of steam to the purposes of hus- 
bandry, published about thirteen years ago in the 
Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, and designed 
to evoke general interest in the experiments 
which were then a-foot in steam-ploughing,— 
“That the steam-engine would, at no very distant 
STEAM ENGINE. 
331 
day, supply the place of animal labour in agri- 
culture, and become as mighty an instrument in 
augmenting the productiveness of the soils, as 
it has proved in creating and economizing 
manufactures, in navigating the ocean, and in 
travelling on land, was many years ago predicted 
by Franklin,—a prediction reiterated by Davy, 
and latterly acknowledged and enforced by many 
distinguished agriculturists. The successful ap- 
plication of Mr. Heathcoat’s invention to the 
culture of bogs,—the most repellant and obsti- 
nate of waste land,—leaves no doubt of its appli- 
cability to soil already in cultivation. Coals are 
now procurable throughout Great Britain, at 
prices which have caused the steam-engine to be | 
extensively introduced as a substitute for animal 
labour in many of the processes connected with | 
husbandry. Thrashing, cleaning, and grinding 
corn, hay-chopping, turnip-slicing, &c., are now | 
performed by small engines fixed on farm pre- 
mises. Even the churn has its steam-engine |} 
managed by the dairy maid; and so great is the | 
advantage arising to the dairy farmer, from the 
regularity of motion, and economy produced by 
it, that hundreds of small engines for this fami- 
liar purpose alone, are used in the North of Eng- 
land and in Scotland. But these are humble 
savings compared with the benefit to be derived 
from the vast steam power which may be brought 
to bear on the soil itself. Those agriculturists 
who are acquainted with the effects produced by 
the valuable sub-soil plough recently invented by 
Mr. Smith of Deanston, will readily appreciate 
the importance of an invention which will enable 
him to employ that kind of plough at a much 
diminished cost per acre. Mr. Smith’s plough 
with steam power, will effect a revolution in 
agriculture. Implements of husbandry have 
hitherto been restricted in form, weight, and 
dimensions, to the powers and manageableness 
of a team of horses. A new class of instruments 
will take their place ; the stiffest soils may be 
broken up and pulverized to any desired depth ; 
strong clays, the natural wheat lands, may be 
profitably cultivated, rendered more fertile, and 
fitted to bear a better and more systematic ro- 
tation of crops.” 
STEAM ENGINE. The use of fixed steam 
engines, of from four to eight horse power for 
impelling thashing machines, is now common on 
large farms in the north of England and the 
south of Scotland ; and the use of both fixed and 
portable steam engines, of two, three, and four 
horse power, for impelling the several machines 
of the farmery, is pretty general in many of the 
best parts of the centre and south of England. 
Steam power, next to water-power, is the most 
desirable for the thrashing machine; and, in 
consequence of both its greatness and its steadi- 
ness, it affords scope for the construction of the 
machine being of the most admirable description. 
See the article TuHrasnine. A non-condensing 
fixed engine is the most simple, and at its first 
