A STEAM DIGGER.

Patea Mail, 16 October 1880, Page 3

A STEAM DIGGER.

(From the London Times.) A new era appears to bo opening in the history of steam cultivation. As the first steam-ploughing was the novelty at the Itoyal Agricultural Society’s Carlisle Meeting in 1855, so at the Carlisle Show of 1880 the great mechanical feat is steam digging. One new invention which is to come before the judges at Carlisle is the digging engine patented by T.C.Darby, who, after much experience in the field, has redesigned the whole apparatus. The

working parts are now so simplified that persons who wondered at the first combination of hugh forks, levers, and eccentrics would now scarcely recognise the invention in its present guise.

Three hugh forks suspended from a crank-shaft mounted behind the boiler operate upon a breadth of 20ft at once, these forks ineastuing over 6bft apiece in width, successively striking the ground after the manner of a three-throw pump. Each fork rises and falls Ift, and is canted backward a distance of 2ft, the sod or slice dug off from the whole ground being deposited at the back of an open trench or furrow and turned over, so that the face of stubble or sward rests against the back of the preceding slice. The process has been described as ploughing so many

sections of furrow about seven feet long, but cutting and turning them over crosswise instead of lehgthwise. The remarkable feature in die performance is that a single-cylinder engine of eight-horse power nominal, working witli 701b pressure of steam, digs at the rate of 10 acres per day, land that takes three horses to plough an acre per day at the same depth. The weight of the whole machine is 12 tons ; but this is transported at the pace of only half a mile an hour.