ARCH, 1803.:

SSS—————-

DESCRIPTION OBA HAND DRILL MACHINE. ENIT I A- PLATE. a A

To a tor of the Agricultural Magazine. n BIN,;

N the 42d Number of your Magazine, I ventured to pro- pose to your Readers the consìderation of a plan, which had always appeared to me as likely to prove beneficial to the occupiers of small farms; a class of men, whg have long laid under the imputation of extreme bigotry to old-received’opi- nions, and of obstinacy in acceding to new ones, any-wise relating to the tillage ot land. In too many cases, the accu- sation 15, doubtless, well founded; but why should the cen- sure, be general? It happens, that not a few men of this de- scription within my own actual observation are honourable exceptions to this general rule, who aré-âs open to Conviction àâs any set of men whäteyer: but the‘Teal fact is, that they are restrained from the opportunity of práctising what they ap=- prove, by that most powerful of all obstacles to improvement, the cnormous price demauded for most new invented imple- ments of husbandry, However Patents may encourage inven- tion, they certainly tend to check the introduction of any in- genious and useful piece of mechanism, by tempting the in- ventor to fix an extraordinary price on his wares, the law en- suring to, and protecting bim in the monopoly of the sale, Impressed with this idea, I turned my thoughts to the pos- sibility of reducing some of the more usetul implements of the latest improvementto à small scale, and in April and May last, I applied a single-shared horse-hoe to five acres of wheat drilled at nine inch intervals, by way of experiment. My success was even beyond my hopes, for the expence fairly computed, fell far below the ordinary price of hand-hoeing, and the ef- ficacy was s0 superior as to confirin every by-stander in the opinion of its utility. The expence about 15 or 16s. This induced me to form a machine for sowing, which should be light enough to run by hand, making one drill only at a time. My attempis have not been attended with the success I met with in my experiment with the single-shared horse-hog, tor not being aware of the difficulty of driving it on new Boughed ground, and fearful it would not make a sufliciently deep im-

Þression, I ran into the other extreme and made it much too

heavy. Thus far, then, my hrst attempt has proceeded. I only E

Ag. Mag. Fat, 8. a A è

WE X LIV.]

LA