These are now made of a draft so light that four horses work them easily. With the Michigan double plow the draft is very much more severe. Plowing by steam has never been economieally accomplished in the United States. It not by any means that the plowing is not superior of its kind, especially when extra deep plowing is required, as has been attested in the sugar fields of Louisiana, and in various trials in the West, by the various traction engines that have been invented. The difficulty with all traction engines has been, that on soft soil, they would mire themselves, or else the sticky nature of the soil would at times clog them. Another diffi culty is the trouble in obtaining skilled engineers in the country, and the expense of hauling fuel and water to feed the engines. Again if they get out of repair, ordinary country blacksmiths can not repair them. On the other hand our two-fur row gang plows do operate successfully and evenly, and are much employed on large farms and upon the great wheat fields of the far North west. As illustrating steam gang-plowing as against horse gang-plowing, we give two illus trations, showing the English system of steam plowing, and the American system of horse plowing. The reader will readily see why, in ordinary plowing, the American system is the cheap2st. The writer has superintended the working of twenty single swing plows, turn ing twenty furrows, with twenty men and sixty horses, or three horses to each plow, the plows cutting fourteen inches each. The daily average work of the gang., on lands running across a section, of 640 acreq, WEIS one-third of an acre per hour, or three acres per team per day, or an aggregate of sixty acres a day. Few plowmen understand the nece:-sity of a niee adjustment of the plow to the work in hand; bolts are lost, nuts get loose, and the plow is still driven, they being content with such work as it will do. If it be a plow in which a coulter is used, feeble attempts are made to remedy the evil by giving the coulter a twist out of line, or altering the set of the clevis, when the real fault lies in a proper adjustment of the beam. A plow, when prop erly adjusted, in a soil free from roots and stones, will swim along almost without the aid of the plowman. The sarne plow not properly adjusted, can scarcely be made to work at all.
Again, the good plowman will feel at once the. slightest deviation in a plow from the true course, and a slight change keeps the plow in its. pr.oper course. So we see that lightness and delicacy of touch is by no means a useless accomplishment in the plowman. It is of as much consequence as that he have a correct eye, that the furrow slices be straight, and of uniform width and thickness, and turned so the plowed surface shall be disintegrated and level, or left rough as occasion may require. Yet, how many plowmen really pay attention to these details? How many, in fact, know really good plowing from indifferent plowing. It is to be regretted
that competitive trials by expert plowmen should have gone out of fashion. They were of great value as object lessons to the masses who. attended. At least the master of the farm might here compare results and get many valu able lessons to be communicated to the farm hands, and knowing just what good work con sisted in, it might be insisted that the work shobld be so done. For the object in all matches of this kind should be to award the pre mium to the plowman leaving the best surface finish, with proper pulverization, according to. the width and depth of furrow. As an aid in estimating the work to be done by a plow we give an elaborate and highly valuable table on page 749, showing the distance traveled by the team in plowing an acre, in connection with the width of furrow slice in inches and the extent plowed per day, the team traveling respectively eighteen and sixteen miles, working nine hours per day. The rationale of plowing may be Stated as follows: A soil in a finely pul verized state holds more moisture—hydroscopie water—than when in a solid state. A. single experiment will show this. A field plowed in the fall will retain a larger amount of moisture in the spring than if it were left unplowed. Finely pulverized soil when in a dry state takes up moisture equally from the air, and with it large qua,ntities of nitrogen compounds. Thus porous soils, because cool, are constantly conden sing water during droughts, and hold the consti tuents it contains to be taken up by the rootlets, and assimilated by plants. Soils thoroughly underdrained, when allowed to rest, become honey-combed by insects to the water line occu pied by the drains, and hence these serve as channels to quickly conduct the rain which falls immediately away. This, however, is not what is wanted, for thus the fertilizing properties in rain water do not come intimately in contact with the soil, and are lost; thus the error into which certain superficial experimenters have been led, in supposing that drained lands would not stand drought. If the surface soil were pul verized to a depth of from six to ten inches or more, the case would be very different. It would then act as a filter, passing the water off more slowly, but still fast enough, and in addi tion, the elements of fertility would be retained and the whole area of the soil uniformly moist ened. Again, underdrained soils liable to become water soaked, become hard and impacted. Insects do not penetrate to any considerable depth, and the soil holds water like a dish, to be slowly evaporated by the sun, rendering it, by this very process, cold, sour, and unfertile. So. also tilth and drainage prevents the washing away of fertilizing properties during continued rains; the moisture is absorbed, and passed down through the soil instead of running along thE surface, and thence into the nearest stream.