Mr. Smith uses an ordinary agricultural
portable steam-engine of from eight to ten-horse
power, which he fixes at one corner of a field,
for choice of from ten to twelve acres. In
front of the engine is a windlass, or capstan,
with two drums, of a peculiar shape, with a coil
of wire rope around it; and this rope is led over
four anchored pulleys one at each corner and along
each side of the field. The windlass attached to the
fly-wheel of the steam-engine by a driving band
can be instantaneously driven in either direction.
Four different ploughs, or cultivators, are used,
as occasion requires. To the bow of the one in
use, two ends of the rope are attached. An
engine-driver, a man at the windlass, a ploughman,
an assistant to shift the pulleys, and a
boy, are the staff required. The plough cultivator
begins by travelling along the more distant
side of the field, between the two anchored
pulleys; at the end of the first journey the
pulley in front is shifted, the engine is reversed,
and in thirty seconds the plough is travelling
back; and thus, by alternately shifting, bringing
up each of the two most distant anchors, strip by
strip the whole field is "smashed up" in parallel
lines to the spot where the engine stands.

His plough No. 4 consists of a very strong
frame, in which are fixed three subsoil ploughs,
with a pair of wheels in front to guide it, and
above the centre another pair to regulate the
depth. The shares for breaking up clay soil in
autumn are set to work six or eight inches deep
(a depth impossible with horse power). The
"points of the shares become imbedded in the
subsoil, and the whole mass, nearly a yard wide
and six or eight inches deep, is torn from its
position, and more or less mingled together,
leaving for the most part the weeds or grass
which it is desirable to destroy near the
surface." An implement of greater breadth and
more tines on light and moderately tenacious
soils has been made to move more than ten to
twelve acres in a day. But for a description of
the four Wolston cultivators those further
interested must refer to the inventor's own
pamphlets and pictures. The obvious drawback of
the system consists in the loss of power by the
friction of the rope along four sides and consequent
indirect traction. Common farm labourers
have been repeatedly and easily taught the
duties of Smith's system of steam cultivation.
According to universal testimony, nothing can
exceed the quality of the work and the
satisfactory result in crops of all kinds.

Mr. Fowler employs a portable steam-engine
with a series of drums whose axle is fixed
vertically beneath it; a wire rope, passed round the
drum of a movable anchor, is stretched across the
field to be ploughed, and the two ends are made
fast to the plough, thus forming an endless rope.
In working, the engine and the anchor move
along the two headlands in parallel lines, and the
plough before described, or any other implement
—Mr. Fowler has been converted to the cultivator
—moves forwards and backwards between the
engine and the anchor by the reversing gear of the
engine. It is evident that under this arrangement
the action is more direct, less rope is
required, and less power lost by friction
than in the Wolston system. It is to be
regretted that an arrangement has not been made
by which Smith's admirable cultivators could
be attached to Fowler's steam power; for Smith
wisely repudiates ploughing, and "takes his
stand on cultivation;" and it seems likely that
on farms with fields of moderate size, and soil of
not the most tenacious character,the Wolstonising
plan will continue to be preferred. The results
of Fowler's cultivation before he had succeeded
in reducing the cost and weight of his apparatus
to a portable and saleable standard, is well
described in Morton's Farmer's Almanac, in a
report of the Highland Society's trial at Stirling,
in November, 1857: "The trenching plough
(Cotgreave's) excited the greatest enthusiasm.
Everybody knows the difficulty and expense of
ploughing two furrows deep, and the time and
labour necessary to reduce enormous furrow
slices into a comminuted state. But this
implement drawn at a speed of three miles an hour,
turned down not a tough whole slice, but one of
loose mould into the trench left by the preceding
bout, and lifted up from an average depth of
12½ inches, and spread upon the top, not heavy,
unwieldy masses, but divided and pulverised, a
stratum of subsoil, equal to good digging by
hand, at one-third or one-fourth the price." Now,
in a paper read at the Central Farmers' Club
in June, 1857, by Mr. Bond, which had the
effect of giving an extraordinary impetus to
the practice of autumnal cultivation of clay soils,
and indirectly to steam cultivation, he described
himself as using a common plough with two
horses, followed immediately by a scarifier with
six or eight horses, working at harvest time, as
soon as the sheaves were shocked in rows, and
these two implements went over the land twice:
that is to say, they required labour equal to from
sixteen to twenty horses to do less than two
acres a day; and he added, thus confirming the
theory and practice of the Farmer of Wolston:
—"The common plough is not suitable for
autumnal cultivation; it buries the weeds
instead of bringing them to the surface."

With these extracts we pause, and sum up
with the following elementary information for
the benefit of our bread and beef eating non-
agricultural readers:

Stiff clay soils were the favourite farms
of our forefathers in the days of the rudest
agriculture, because they gave good crops
in dry favourable seasons, with very little
or no manure, and received on the rest of a
fallow more quickly than light, or sandy, or
chalky soils, for reasons which the chemists of
this last quarter of the nineteenth century have
discovered. But sheep-treading, root cultivation,
or, as it is commonly called, the Norfolk system,
brought light and chalk soils into favour, as
arable farms and clays were neglected and left
to poor farmers. When the Parkesian system of
systematic, deep, thorough drainage was
completed and established by an almost solitary
successful instance of Government interference in a