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REMARKS OX DRILL HUSBANDRY—TIIE TOP-DRESSER.

f Class IX.

Hensmax and Son lias also obtained a Prize Medal, andhas this peculiarity :—In all other drills the coulters,which distribute the manure or seed, Jiang from the car-riage In this drill the carriage rests upon the coulters,•which are like the irons of skates ; it may be said, indeed,to run on four pairs of skates. Hence this drill’s powerof penetrating hard ground, and of giving a firm bed tothe wheat-seed in soft ground. Each drill coulter, how-ever, preserves its independence as when suspended.This self-adjustment is required by the inequality oftilled ground, and is thus obtained : each pair of coultersis fixed to the end of a balance beam, these again toothers, and they to a central one. Tims each coulter, inwell-poised rank, gives its independent share of support.

Hence this drill is simpler in management than anyother, for, resting on its own base like a plough, it is alsoguided from behind like a plough; and any man who canhold the stilts of a plough for a straight furrow can steerthis drill with a pair of horses only and reins. Hence,too, its convenience; for if you wisli to sow' close up tothe sheepfold, instead of ordering out a drill and four, asit were in state, you merely keep back one plough fromthe field.

Hitherto we have been dealing with corn drills intendedgenerally for seed only. In endeavouring to fill up thepicture of the point of development at which agriculturalmechanism now stands, we come next to turnip drills, inwhich manure is also distributed as well as seed, generallybones or superphosphate. As is well known, there aretwo ways of growing turnips, the ridge and the fiat. Jnthe ridge, or Northumberland method, the ground isthrown into ridges by a two-sided plough, “ a doubleTom,” and, dung being laid in the intervals, the ridgesare split, and the new ridges enfold the dung.

It is on these ridges that Mr. Hornsby’s prize drillworks, depositing manure-dust and seed, and reducing theridge, by concave rollers, to a compact rounded form.

The ridge system, however, is most at home under ourcool northern and moist western skies—in Northumber-land and in Lancashire . In our drier districts, as inLincolnshire and Berkshire, it is found better with thebulk of the crop, when rain does come, to make moreexpedition. Using a turnip drill, therefore, 6 feet wide,we sow four rows at once with some light manure, andarc thus enabled to sweep rapidly over our ground, whilethe seed finds a moist bed fit for germination before thedust begins once more to fly.

Still, however rapid the four-row turnip-drill, south-country farmers are often obliged to wait in July for asoaking shower—waiting, indeed, often in vain, until it istoo late to look for a bulky turnip crop. A south-countryfarmer, Mr. Chandler, of Market Lavington, Wilts , hasproduced a machine to deal even with this defect of ourclimate. His water-drill pours down each manure coulterthe requisite amount of fluid, mixed with powdered ma-nure, and thus brings up the plant from a mere bed ofdust. Having used it largely during three years, I maytestify to its excellence. Only last July, when my bailiffhad ceased turnip-sowing on account of the drought, bydirecting the use of the water-drill, I obtained from thislater sowing an earlier and a better show of young plantsthan from the former one with the dust-drill. Nor is

earth as soon as it is dropped. There is no part of thisdrill likely to be out of order : it can be worked with onehorse; and there appears no part of it that, in case ofaccident, could not be repaired by a common blacksmith.Price 10/. In consequence of its combined merits, sim-plicity and cheapness, we awarded it a Prize Medal.

Liquid-manure Distributor. —Mr. T. K. Beeves and Mr. J.Bratton, of Westbury, exhibited a liquid-manure distri-butor, which did its work in an extraordinary manner,distributing equally manure-wature or the thickest sewerageiu the most perfect manner. From the construction of themachine, it is impossible to clog in the delivery of thethickest slush. It consists of a series of buckets or troughsthat are attached to a metal chain or band, and whichworks round two rollers as the cart goes on, the wheelgiving the motive power to the rollers. The price of thisadmirable water-cart, complete, is 10/. We awarded it aPrize Medal.— C. B. Ciialloxer.

there any increase of expense, if water be within a mode-rate distance, for we do not use powder-manures alone.They must be mixed with ashes that they may be diffusedin the soil. Now, the expense and labour of supplyingthese ashes are equal to the cost of fetching mere water;and, apart from any want of rain, it is found that thismethod of moist diffusion, dissolving, instead of minglingonly, the superphosphate, quickens its action even upondamp ground, and makes a little of it go further.

There is yet one more kind of drill. The commondrills economize manure by concentrating it in lines alongthe rows of the turnip plants. Thus, instead of shovellingbones from carts, as was first done in Lincolnshire, atsixty bushels per acre, we came to sow only sixteenbushels of bones in lines, or more recently but threebushels perhaps of superphosphate, prepared*either frombones or from the animal remains of geological ages,among which Liebeg told us, and told us truly, to searchfor our phosphorus. But though turnips are sown inlines, and come up thickly in lines, no sooner are thethriving young plants well marshalled in green array thannineteen in twenty are ruthlessly cut doun by the hoe, sothat the field appears for a time once more bare. Theroots must, of course, be allowed ample room in the row,but some manure will have been wasted in nourishing theplants doomed to perish. Hence, Mr. Hornsby’s drop-drill, avoiding this wholesale massacre, is made to dropthe seed and the manure, by a second step of mechanicfrugality, only at those points in the lines where theplants are intended to stand. Nor are these points in thelines fixed points, for their distance can be varied from 9inches to 18 inches asunder, and the intervals between therows can be equally varied from 15 to 30 inches. Thedose, again, of mixed manure can be varied from ten tofifty bushels per acre. Such is the elastic, yet accuratepliability, with which in agriculture mechanism liasseconded chemistry. Having now gone through thevarious kinds of drills—corn or turnip drills, ridge or flatdrills, dry or wet, line or drop drills—we may pass to akindred but entirely new class of implement.

2. The lop-dresser, or Manure Distributor.

Although, as has been said, wheat is seldom sown withthe manure-drill, being usually provided with its chiefrequisite, nitrogen, through farm-yard dung or throughsheepfolding, no plant is so liable as wheat to break downfrom its first promise; and on inferior soils, whether toolight or too heavy, one might almost say that wheatalways looks well before Christmas , and always looks illbefore Lady-day. Our predecessors, to refresh its flaggingstrength, used to spread soot or pigeon’s dung, both con-taining ammonia, over it, especially on the lower sides ofthe ridges near the water-furrow, where the plant wasperhaps almost killed by the lodgment of rain. But theirpractice was, of course, limited by resources so narrow.We, having guano and nitrate, can deal out liberally thetimely supply. But if sown by hand, these very lightmanures, especially guano, are carried away before theirdescent by a strong wind: and sometimes when half agale has been blowing, it has seemed to me that I wasmanuring my neighbour’s field quite as much as my own.A manure-distributor was therefore required; and theagricultural meeting at Exeter brought out eight com-petitors, the winner being Mr. Holmes’s, of Norwich.

I rejoice to find that wc have not only a good inventionhere, but that it is being actively used. The machine,new as it is, and involving a new outlay for artificialmanure, is employed very largely in the western divisionof Norfolk —the classic ground of improvement—for dis-tributing a small quantity, such as three bushels per acre,of guano or nitrate of soda, or a larger quantity of super-phosphate and rape-cake, on wheat in the spring of theyear. This fact deserves the more to be known, becausethe convincing argument for any agricultural change isthat it has become a practice somewhere or other—anargument that answers where reasoning fails. The otherargument—that, namely, founded on quick return—isalso not wanting, as it has lately been shown that nitrateso applied on poor land will sometimes yield double its ownvalue,—nearly a quarter of wheat at a cost of 205. per acre.