Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/341

Rh IMPLEMENTS.] AGRICULTURE 315 with him to construct for him a windlass and other tilling apparatus, with which he got to work on his own farm in the autumn of that year. These two leaders in steam- cultivation did not long work together. They had decided and diverse opinions as to the best road to success, and accordingly each for the future took his own course. Mr Smith s merit is not largely that of an original inventor of machinery, but rather that of a zealous, persevering, and successful applier of the inventions of others. But by his own example and his vigorous writings, he has contributed very largely indeed to the success of steam cultivation. He makes use of the ordinary portable engine, such as is em ployed as a thrashing power, which gives motion to a detached windlass with two drum?, from which a wire-rope is carried round the area to be operated upon, and hence the name &quot; Roundabout&quot; applied to this system. This rope being attached by a turning bow to a powerful grubber, the implement is drawn to and fro across the field by reversing as required the action of the windlass, the slack half of the rope being uncoiled from the one drum as the part in work is wound up upon the other. His mode of working is to break up the ground by using a three-tined grubber, and then to go over it again with a seven-tined one, working at right angles to the first. Mr Smith zealously advocates the supe riority of grubbing to ploughing, being of opinion that if the soil is thoroughly broken up to a sufficient depth, it is better not to reverse the surface, as weeds are thus kept on the top, and the removal of them thereby greatly facilitated. Mr Smith soon made an important addition to his system of tillage by means of an implement which he calls a Ridger and Subsoiler. By means of it the soil, after being thoroughly smashed up by the steam-grubber, is thrown into 36-inch ridges, the tine at the same time penetrating and loosening the subsoil in each furrow several inches deeper. His clay soil treated thus immediately after harvest is put into the best possible condition for benefiting by the alternations of wintry weather, for allowing rain-water to pass readily and beneficially to the drains, and for yielding a friable seed-bed in spring. It has enabled him altogether to dispense with dead fallows ; to grow abundant crops of wheat and beans alternately for a number of successive years, at an average annual cost of 8s. 6d. per acre for tillage ; and to keep his land perfectly clean under this constant cropping. He has the high merit not only of being the first man who successfully used steam power for the cultiva tion of a farm, but of demonstrating that this can be done with manifest economy even by the occupiers of small farms, Smith s Steam Cultivator as at voik. seeing that his own farm extends to but 180 acres of arable land. After the lapse of eighteen years there is probably no one who yet practises steam cultivation with as great success and economy. At the end of this period he reports that his engine and tackle are in excellent condition. Mr Smith s apparatus was for a time manufactured by the well-known firm of J. & F. Howard of Bedford, and more recently by Barford & Perkins of Peterborough. Since 1860 the Messrs Howard have sent out a tackle of their own, in which the main features of Smith s system are retained, but to these, they have themselves added from time to time various improvements. By means of a self-acting windlass and self-moving anchors, their tackle can now be worked by one eugineman (who also attends to the windlass), one ploughman, and two porter-boys. Although the earliest in date of invention, the most recent in actual operation is the tackle of Messrs Fisken, which has features peculiar to itteJ. A single traction engine is stationed at any convenient point on the margin of or near to the field to be operated upon, the preference always being given to a site where there is water, whence it can supply itself either by pumping or by the patent injector. The other parts of the apparatus are two self-moving anchor windlasses, which are placed opposite to each other on two sides of the field, occupying the place and doing the work of the two engines in the double-engine system. These windlasses are mounted on four disc wheels, and have also a spud which cuts into the soil to give the necessary resistance to the side pvll. They each carry a winding-drum with the necessary length of wire-rope, and these windlass-drums wind up and pay out alternately in precisely the same way as in Fowler s double engines. They also have each a winding-forward drum with wire-rope and anchor fixed a-head, by means cf