a local Magazine (the East Anglian' of that date) informs me, in 1814. The first cast-iron scarifier was, if I mistake not, Biddell's.

4. The Introduction of the Lever Principle.-To give a constant and equable pressure which may be increased or lessened at pleasure appears to owe its origin to Baldwin, a farmer of Mendham, in Suffolk, who in 1790 first added it to drills to give each separate coulter an independent motion and what pressure it required. It was soon after introduced into the East Lothian stubble-rake, and fifty years afterwards another Suffolk man (Garrett) added it to horse-hoes. Who first added levers to scarifiers (as Biddell's, for instance) and other tillage implements for altering and regulating the depth in the soil, or wholly putting out of work, without stopping the horses, I know not, but Henry Osborne, a Suffolk farmer, first added it to the wheel of a plough.

5. Making a Machine serve different Purposes at the same Time, so as to complete the proposed Work at one Operation. — As examples we have drills which drill in the manure and cover it, drill the turnips and cover them, and shape the ridges at one operation, and drills for manure, corn, and seeds at the same time. Which county has the merit of introducing these combinations I know not, but Suffolk is as probable a one as any, from the long standing of its drill-manufacturers.

6. Making Machines serve different Purposes at different Times. This is especially useful for machines for which there is only an occasional use, but care must be taken that one operation does not spoil the other, and we have an indifferent “Jack of all trades in the machine line. As examples of this principle Clarke's Universal Plough, which can be made (1) a double tom or ridge-plough, (2) a moulding-plough, (3) a horse-hoe or cleaning-plough, (4) a skeleton or broad-share plough, altogether a very perfect tool for ridge culture.

Cooke's drill (the original of the Suffolk one) was, though now superseded, a most complete implement for light dry soils and flat culture. It was invented about 1780. The same machine was easily transformed into a cultivator, horse-hoe, scarifier, or grubber; and by substituting a corn-rake, stubble-rake, or quitch-rake for the beam of coulters or hoes, it would rake cornstubbles or clean land of root-weeds. I believe some of Garrett's drills are so made that by removing the drill-box, and substituting tines and hoes for the coulters, they serve for lever horse-rakes and horse-hoes.

7. Portable Machines.-Hiring ditto out.—I have, in a notice of Asbey, of Blyborough, remarked that the first portable threshingmachine was of Suffolk invention. The custom of hiring out threshing-machines and drills as a matter of business appears to

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have been so likewise. Our custom of letting out machines is thus mentioned by Loudon, Encyclopædia,' 1832; but is of much older date: "Portable threshing-machines are very common in Suffolk. It is not unusual in that county for an industrious labourer who may have saved 30l. or 407. to own one, which is moved from place to place on two wheels, and worked when fixed by three or four horses. The horses and other labourers are supplied by the farmer, and the owner of the machine acts as feeder. The quantity threshed is from 15 to 20 quarters a-day." The earliest notice I have seen of the letting out drills is in the Suffolk Report,' 1804, p. 351: "Labourers buy drill-machines (Cooke's), with which they go out drilling at 2s. an acre, and some of them earn from 10l. to 207. a-year, and some more, by this practice.' Mr. Cooke was apparently the mechanist of Halesworth whom I mentioned in a former page. The custom of the Suffolk drill-men travelling with their machines to distant counties, as Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, &c., is, as I have shown, on the decrease. The letting out of machines as a separate business is peculiarly suitable to counties where small farms are numerous and the implements only of occasional use. The system might be extended to many other machines, as haymakers, machines for mowing hay and cutting corn (such machines are used in America), draining-ploughs, subsoilers, clod-crushers, and what would be very useful in many counties, two-horse ploughs, to introduce straight ploughing and give a lesson to master and

men.

1. Ploughs.-The Messrs. Ransome, of Ipswich, have for a long series of years made the plough a special object of their study, and that they have succeeded may be inferred from the general use which their ploughs have obtained. There is scarcely an agricultural meeting of any note in England at which trials at ploughing-matches have not been made to bring these ploughs in competition with those of local and other makers, and the results are too well known to need repetition here. In the construction of the plough they have availed themselves of such form and material as combine lightness with adequate strength, and have contrived to fit the several parts in so simple a manner that all may be easily removed and replaced as occasion requires by a ploughman without leaving the field. The strength of the various parts of the plough is so arranged and proportioned as that while as a whole it is sufficient for ordinary work, if an impediment in the land either in roots, stones, &c. occur, that part is the first to give way which is the least expensive and most easy to repair. The iron-work can also be obtained separate, so that local plough-makers can fit them up with beams and handles of wood; and every part of the iron-work is so made to pattern and system

that there is a certainty of each fitting properly without requiring any further mechanical skill than ploughmen in general possess. In short, it may be truly said that Ransome's plough-manufactory is not only the most extensive in England, but in the world, and the ploughs are very extensively exported to the colonies, for which the properties I have referred to render them peculiarly suitable.

Ploughshares were made of wrought-iron until, in 1785, the late Robert Ransome, of Ipswich, first obtained a patent for making "shares of cast-iron;" and this circumstance is worthy of notice, not only as a very important and successful improvement in the part in question, but as the means of drawing the attention of that individual and many others to further improvements in the plough, which were very soon after carried into effect. In 1803 Robert Ransome obtained a second patent for a mode of applying a case-hardening process to cast-iron shares. This invention is now so well known that a brief description of it may suffice.

Before the time referred to, cast-iron shares, although occasionally used in some districts, were found to wear away too fast from the under side. When the first edge was worn off the share became too thick to cut the ground properly, and its tendency when so worn was to "lose its hold of the work," and to pass over weeds without cutting them, while the blunt edge greatly added to the draught. The improvement alluded to is that of case-hardening the under side the thickness of one sixteenth or one-eighth of an inch, which is in effect like a layer of steel underneath the share. This part, from its hardness, wears very slowly, while the upper part of the share grinds more quickly away, thereby producing a constant sharp edge on the under side. The land-side point of the share is also hardened in a similar manner, which prevents it from wearing so fast as it would otherwise do at that part, a tendency to which all shares are more or less subject. The following figure shows a broken share, in which the white lines indicate the hardened parts. By the use of cast-iron shares thus tempered considerable ex

pense is saved, the first cost being so much less than wrought-iron that they may be renewed at smaller charge than the repairs needful to the latter. Another benefit arises from their use, that the consumer is no longer liable to those inconveniences to which he was before necessarily subject with wrought-iron shares, from the frequent repairs requisite in sharpening and

"laying" them, an operation requiring the aid of a blacksmith, who generally working at a distance from the farm, very often unprofitably occupied the time of the men and horses.

Following up this improvement in the shares a Suffolk farmer invented for his own use a cast-iron plough-ground or bottom, with a moveable sole or slade; this had mortices to receive the tenons of the wood, to which it was attached. This ploughground soon became of general use in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and but few ploughs were then made without it.

Plough-ground and Share.

There was still a defect to which even ploughs made with this iron ground were liable, which was that nearly the same uncertainty attended their manufacture as in those constructed entirely of wood; scarcely two workmen would make them alike, and sometimes one plough would work well and easy to the holder, while another made by the same hand would be inferior in these respects; in addition to which inconvenience the wood tenons in the iron mortices were liable to decay, and a constant expense of repair was entailed, which has of late years, under further improvements in the construction of ploughs, been obviated. Soon after the introduction of the cast-iron share, ploughs were invented having their entire bodies made of cast-iron.

The frames, of which the preceding are sketches, were so contrived as to admit of the handles, beams, shares, mould-boards, soles, and other parts being screwed to them, and any portion altered or removed at pleasure. They also admitted of the mould-board being set to a wider or narrower furrow, and of changing the shape of different parts as they were required for different purposes.

The following figure shows the entire body of the plough.

As every part of the plough upon this construction admits of being easily replaced by the ploughman without the aid of a mechanic, the farmer has only to keep by him a stock of the wearing parts to ensure his plough being at all times in working order and in the original form.

This arrangement of the body of the plough was a very considerable improvement beyond anything that had been before produced, and is applicable to ploughs of almost every description, as is shown by almost every one of the ploughs exhibited at the Royal Agricultural Society's annual meetings being so constructed.

The plough-head, which requires no description, I notice because