407
The expence of a steam engine, as applicable to threshing,cannot be estimated with any rigid accuracy, as the experienceof that power in Scotland is very recent and much limited:But, from any statements on this subject which have beencommunicated, the expence of coals, and of a man to super-intend the fire and the machinery, cannot much exceed thecharge of horses, and in some instances may be below it.Fire, however, though a powerful agent, and a very steadyone under good management, is a most dangerous neighbourto a farm-yard, and must be attended with considerable risk.There is, perhaps, another disadvantage attending the use ofsteam in threshing. The alternate heating and cooling ofthe steam apparatus, will probably occasion much loss andexpence in repairing the furnace and boiler ; and, in districtsmerely rural, it is hardly to be expected that work people canbe readily procured who are sufficiently conversant in steamengines, for keeping the valves, leathers, and other parts ofsuch nice machinery, in due order and repair.
As the threshing-machine is entirely of Scotch invention,that implement has been treated of in this section at consider-able length. Any particularities that belong to the detail ofthreshing the various kinds of grain, worthy of attention, willbe noticed in the more minute accounts of the different ar-ticles that are cultivated upon arable land, subjected to thatoperation, in the subsequent divisions of this Chapter.
SECT. XV.
OF DRESSING GRAIN.
Iti the immediately preceding section, it was stated that thegrain is delivered into the clean corn room more than halfdressed, from the best constructed threshing machines; and