The old plough which acts on the principle of turning up a fresh portion of the soil, burying that which has for some time been at the surface, will probably always continue to be the chief implement of tillage ; but other implements have been invented, which by means of wheels can be regulated so as to act at a greater or leas depth. These have received the different names of scarifiers, grubbers, or cultivators, according to the fancy of the inventors. Many of these answer the purpose well, and save labour. They can be used in all directions so as to pulverise the soil to any degree. Heavy rollers are used when clods require breaking.
It would be endless to enumerate all the implements of tillage which are daily invented : some of the most useful have been already des cribed. LAGRICULTOItA4 bastrussrrs; ARABLE LAND; PLOUGH.] It is however right that reference should be made to the use of steam power in their employment.
Tillaye by Sleam-poteer.—Steam-power has long been used in driving threshing-tuachinos and chaff-cutters, and other barn machinery. It is now coming rapidly into field use for cultivating the land. The movrable steam-engine on wheels is the source of power most generally adopted, being available for any purpose; and the higher powers of this engine, being best adapted for the laborious work of cultivation, aro being made in increasing numbers. Probably in this way alone 10,000 horse-power, equal in its efficiency to at least 25,000 horses is being added annually to the force employed in agriculture in this, country.
Steam-power is in the beginning cheaper than that of horses ; it is continuous, while that of horses is necessarily intermittent ; and it is more efficient. because a greater force can be inure easily concentrated on a given point.
A horse, as used in agriculture, costs 5d. or 6d. per hour ; a steam engine, under agricultural circumstances, costs from 3d. to 4d. per horse-power per hour. A horse works in Scotland ton hours a day, in England eight or nine hours a day, in the field—it is forced to break off work for the maintenance of its strength : an engine works as many hours, with unremitting vigour, as the engineer may choose. It dons, in some instances, work 21 hours per diem, and on some farms it is made to work as long as daylight lasts. Again, horses lose time in all field operations, owing to the dilatory process of turning on the head land : where steam-driven machinery is employed instead, this loss of time is greatly diminished. But the chief advantage of steam-power for cultivation arises from the ability by means of it to concentrate any quantity of force that may be desired. At Buscot Park, near Faringdon, ploughing was this spring (1561) done by steam-power in the stiff Oxford clay of that district, which could not have been done by any quantity of horses, because the power required demanded a team which would have trampled the ground into a harder state than that out of which any implement drawn after them could have got it ; and there is ample experience to show that on this ground alone steam cultivation is more effieient—resulting in better crops than those afforded by horse-cultivation. This is especially true in the case of
clay lands, whose value will no doubt be materially increased by the efficient means now at length provided for working them.
There are two systems in general adoption of applying steam-power to the cultivation of the soil. In the one, which has been carried out by Mr. Smith, of Woristono, the steam-engine stationed in one corner of a field gives motion alternately to one and the other of two wind lasses detached from it, round which is coiled a portion of the wire rope which is carried from one to the other round the piece of land that is being cultivated, and a grubber being fastened to this rope is thus dragged backwards and forwards on the largest straight side of the piece that is being worked : the anchors carrying pulleys at the ends of the working furrow and at all other corners in the course of the rope, are shifted as the extension of the work requires, and the grubber tears up or "smashes up" two or three feet in width at a time, of the land that is being cultivated. The common 7 or S-horse power moveable steam-engine is well adapted to this work.
In Mr. Fowler'e system the steam-engine is furnished with a single pulley lying horizontally beneath the boiler, and it pulls itself along the headland, while a travelling anchorage, namely, a truck on sharp discs for wheels, which cut into the land, pulls itself along the other headland. This anchor is provided with a similar pulley, and a rope travels round both pulleys, being kept tight by an arrangement on the framework of the ploughs, which is drawn by it alternately to and fro between the two. The pulleys hold this rope by a clip-groove, which hinders it from slipping, so that a single half-round holds it tight enough. The tilling implement thus drawn to and fro, consists of two sets of ploughs or grubbers facing one another; the one working when going from the engine, and the other working when travelling to the engine. The change from one to the other need not waste more than half a minute on the headland; and the furrow may be 400 yards long, or even longer. It will be easily seen what a small loss of time in the day is thus incurred, when compared with the usual experience of horse-culture. Mr. Fowler employs generally a 12-horse engine, and, with a four-furrow plough, gets over eight or ten acres a day, at a cost generally of not more than 5s. or Ga. an acre ; whereas by the less efficient horse-cultivation, tho process must cost at least 10s. or 12s. an acre.
There can be little doubt that the application of steam-power to the cultivation of the land will revolutionise agriculture on allilay soils. It will enable the fanner to dispense with probably nearly half his draught animals, and it will both cheapen the cost and increase the efficiency of all tillage operations.