NEW AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY.

Clutha Leader, Volume IV, Issue 203, 31 May 1878, Page 7

NEW AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY.

Amongst the novelties exhibited at last Smithfield Club Show, may he mentioned a working model or a new mechanical digger— -that great desideratum for which our farmers cry, and which, if successful, is likely to create quite a revolution iri the agricultural world. This model is the offspring of of tbe genius of a Mr T. C. Darby, of Pleshey Lodge, Chelmsford, Essex, and is, without doubt, one of the boldest inventions in steam tillage tbat we hnve y.et seen. A more original idea in the application of steam power to 'cultivation has not, we will venture to affirm, been broached or embodied, as this has been, in a practical form (for a full-sized 8 horse-power machine is said to be even now at successful work the other side of Chelmsford), since Mr Wren Roskyns so graphically word -pain ted the revolving comminutor, since Mr Ptomaine placed a vertical boiler engine in a horse-drawn cart with a cylinder rotating in the rear, since Mr Usher attached revolving plough;'; at the tail of an engine, which they propelled a.s a steam paddle wheel propels a steamboat, or since Mr Biekett made a digging cylinder rotate in the opposite direction behind a farm locomotive, Mr Darby's patent is a self-propelling machine, which is self-contained, carries its own motive power with it, and utilises its extra force in the tillage operations. It is in the form of a nominal 8-horse power portable engine, and. is about nine tons in weight. It,- work's laterally, the weight being .-so, -distributed, upon I twelve supports, over- the 16 feet of

irrouud which it covers, that the patentee declares that only about half a ton in weight actually rests upon each foot of land. To the rearmost side are attached a number of large forks, which, as the engine propels itself along, broadside on, are worked in the rear with a kind of singularly intermittent heaving motion, in imitation of manual labour, the earth to the extent of the width of the engine (about 18 feet) being* turned up and turned over far more thoroughly and effectually, it is affirmed, than could be done by any plough. The inventor claims that only one man will be required, who can at the same time stoke and steer 1 the machine, and Mr Darby states that he has already worked at the rate of half an acre per hour upon a wheat stubble of clayey soil. This would give five acres per day, and the work, if well executed, ought to be fully worth L 5 or L 6 ; yet it was said to have been done with one man to stoke and steer, with, of course, a horse and man to supply him with coal and water. Another novelty, at least in the sense "chat it had nob, we believe, been publicly shown before, was a patent hay and corn pitcher, invented and constructed by Mr P. Everitt, of Rvburgh, Norfolk. It is intended for pitching wheat, etc., from the ground into the waggon, and reminds ns somewhat, in one or two of its actions, of a new harvester which was exhibited at the last Bath and West of England and Royal shows. Mr Everitt's machine is drawn by one or two horses, and a fixed rake trailing along the ground gathers up the corn or other produce, which is then taken up by a series of revolving rakes or elevators, and from the top of the machine delivered into the waggon. The machine may be drawn, the patentee explains, alongside the waggon, and need not necessarily be attached to it, thus avoiding all harnessing or unharnessing horses, and doing away with all couplings. It is claimed, also, that the machine can be ea.sily managed by one man and a boy, and that it will cover from 40 to 50 acres per day according to crop, thus professing to do the work of about three harvest- gangs, for it rakes as well as pitches the corn. The Prince of Wales, npon his visit to the show, was much interested in the details of this machine, which were explained to him at his request by the patentee.