COMPANION VOLUME TO THE BOOK OF THE FARM.

THE BOOK

OF

FARM IMPLEMENTS AND MACHINES.

BY

JAMES SLIGHT AND ROBERT SCOTT BURN,

ENGINEERS.

(Ebittb bjr

HENRY STEPHENS , F.R.S.E.

Author of the “Book of the Form,” &e.

In One Volume, large octavo.

ILLUSTRATED WITH 836 ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD AND 39 ENGRAVINGS ON COPPER.

jparjcrsimlmg.

I ll 10.SE who recollect tlie appearance of our Agricultural Implements andMachines at the commencement of this century, will have no hesitationin acknowledging the superiority they now present. Being made chiefly ofwood, and without regard to its intrinsic strength and comparative hulk, theimplements of that period seem clumsy and ill constructed. Now that iron isemployed to a large extent, and in many cases entirely, in their construction,they are not only lighter in appearance, but more elegant in form and moreefficient in use. Still, a close inspection, with a critical eye, will detect, inmany of them, a larger quantity of material than is necessary for strength, anda greater violation of mechanical principles, in the construction of their com-ponent parts, than their general elegance of form would indicate. It cannot bedoubted that a perfect knowledge of the strength of materials and of the prin-ciples of mechanics on the part of our agricultural machinists, would produce allthe existing implements and machines, and invent others much lighter in weightand simpler iii construction, and therefore better adapted for the particular pur-poses for which they are designed. If the same degree of mechanical skill thatis employed in the construction of manufacturing machinery were transferred tothat appertaining to Agriculture, implements would soon become more perfectin every respect than they are. It is not, however, intended to be asserted thatmachines for the purposes of agriculture can be as easily perfected by any amountof mechanical skill as those used in manufactures may be ; because the soil andits crops, being much more crude, unsteady, and unequal, are worse to deal withthan the materials prepared for manufactures. The very distinction, indeed,which is generally made while treating of agricultural mechanism—namely,“implements and machines”—conveys in some measure this important truth.A machine operating upon a substance which varies little from its normal con-dition, may be constructed so as to be nearly in all things self-acting, requiring