ANCIENT FARM IMPLEMENTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5760, 15 September 1879, Page 3

ANCIENT FARM IMPLEMENTS.

Referring to the collection of ancient farm mpleraeuts at the London Agricultural Show, The Times says : This worm-eaten but instructive section of the show is a museum of rustic curiosities, appearing as if they had been magically cryatalised into ponderable shape out of the woodcuts and plates of old Loudou’s “ Encyclopedia,” and the still more venerable Young’s “ Annals of Agriculture.” Hero is a plough made of wood by Mr. John Howard, the venerated plough-maker of Bedford, at least 60 years ago ; here is the Suffolk gallows plough, constructed by the Ransomes of Ipswich seventy years ago ; here are the Rotheram plough, Plenty’s plough, the quaint old types of Scotch swing ploughs, the earliest notions of the foot and the wheel, of the turmvrest and double-furrow implements. One of the most remarkable tools is a Gloucestershire Vale long plough of great age, having a wooden mould-board six feet in length ; but, in spite of the fine angle for prising sticky clay asunder, the throat is excavated by the friction of the soil, showing the lack of mechanical knowledge in the application of the screw-wedge principle. Nothing can exceed the rudeness and ruggedness of framework of the old rollers and disc rollers, rotating spike rollers, or Norwegian harrows exhibited, or of the heavy and clumsy waggons and carts shown as specimens of the farm locomotion of the “good old days.” The proportion of nonpaying weight and the loss of power in the friction of the axles are amusing to contemplate, and illustrate the advance made in agricultural machines now that the Royal Agricultural Society has tested by dynamometer the shades of difference in draft between the best Beverley vehicles and others upon various descriptions of road. Really there seems little more of excellent design and construction in the British implements of seventy or a hundred years ago than the Egyptian, Java, and Danubian ploughs here exhibited side by side, or in the Cyprian plough and cart here shown by Sir Massey Lopes, which look as it chopped out of whole trees with an axe and pocket-knife. Here is an antique drill made by Smyth, of Peasenhall, another by Garrett, of Leistou, and a drill made by Messrs. Hornsby, of Gratham, in 1841—about as complete and efficient for its purpose as the more perfectly fitted and refined drills made at the present day. The ancient forms of turnip cutter or chopper are a study in themselves; so are the several specimens of the old winnower, or fan with cloth flaps rotated by hand, for sending a draught of air through grain falling from a riddle at times when no wind happens to be blowing through the barn The old English horse-power threshing mad ■: - 'he primeval board set with flints which tin' farmers of Cyprus cause bullocks to haul over their com,

the first chaff cutters, the ridiculously jejune horse rakes and haymakers, a* 1 the earliest giass mowers and reapers, including Bell's r-.iper of 1826, Hussey's machine, McCormick's serrated knife, two of Walter A. Wnod’s first production, Hornsby's early Paragon grass mower, exhibited alongside the latest achievements of the best makers, are objects of the greatest value to the agricultural mechanic who wishes to measure progress. Outsider! only wonder why these better machines were not ■'nought of at first. The greatest cu-i"sity is a fixed steam-engine, built hy Trevithick, iu Cornwall, in 1811, and used for threshing, and, indeed, still in use on a f irm up to the date of the present show. A.nnthor interesting relic is Cambridge's portable engine of 1847. Among the representative specimens of early attempts at steam tillage are the first cultivators, first ploughs, anchors, and windlasses of John Fowler, J. and F. Howard, and William Smith of Woolstou.

But the progress iu agricultural machines, through the growth of the factory system and the extension of railways, quite as mucli as through the exertions of agricultural societies, is exemplified by the magnitude of the show itscif. After the Oxford meeting iu 1839, the society’s report, praised Messrs. Itansomes for contributing so largely to the show, they “ having sent up (from Ipswich to Oxford) their waggons laden with more than six tons of machinery and implements.” Why, at Kilburn, this same firm exhibits nine steamengines and five threshing machines, besides a grand array of ploughs, haymakers, horse rakes, and other articles. Messrs. Howard, Messrs. Fowler, Messrs. Aveling and Porter, and many other makers, contribute still heavier machinery; and Clayton Shuttleworth, who did not exist as a firm in 1839, and who built only two engines in the year 1842, have turned out, in 36 years, ending with 1870, the astonishing number of 17,000 portable steamengines, besides fixed engines, threshing machines, mills, and other articles. In 1874 the great Lincoln firm manufactured 960 steam engines. Other firms have grown on a like extensive scale ; and the combined home and export trade (in spite of non-reciprocity in foreign and colonial tariff-) of such firms as Fowler, Aveling, Howard, Ransomes, and Hornsby, compares well with the foregoing. Seventeen years ago the first London show of the Royal Agricultural Society mustered 5094 entries of implements and machinery, from 973 exhibitors. The total value of this department amounted to about £IOO,OOO, one exhibitor alone having bought articles of which the selling prices totalled up to £4910, But at Kilburn there are 11,878 entries, from66Bexhibitors. At Battersea there were shown 125 steam-engines, at Kilburn there are 528. And as an indication of two lines in which great advance has been made, we have the comparison between 26 entries connected with steam cultivators and ploughs at Battersea and 139 at Kilburn, and between nine traction engines at the former and 30 at the present show.