REVOLUTION ON THE FARM

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1683, 1 June 1904, Page 67

REVOLUTION ON THE FARM

I TUB MOTOR AK.D THEI FARMER. The remarkable display of motors at the Crystal Palace just now is very instructive even to the man who is" not immediately concerned to buy a motor for himself. It is a wonderful revelation, to begin with, of the progress of an indtistry which did not exist in this country eight years ago. and the most gratifying feature of the progress that it has made is the fact that Great Britain has taken a veiy prominent part m it. Stelf-propelling mechanism' is irow applied to a great number of purposes, and there is in some forms an immense variety, amid which the intending purchaser may bo bewildered. But turn aside from the sections devoted to motors for pleasure, and witness some of th® purely utilitarian applications for automobilism. To the rural worker the motor heralds a revolution. Already mar chinery has established its place in the field, but save on the largest farms where the steam cultivator and traction engin® are at work, or in the autumn when the steam threshing mill travels round, it has relied for its motive power entirely on the horse. Yet a little while, and, as an enthusiast has said, the horse on the farm will bo nob a necessity but a curiosity. Alack the day ! BUT COM) FACTS must rvile, and the facts are that the horse is slow and costly, that much money may be saved by the use of motors, and that, as farming profitably nowadays depends on the practice of the most rigid economy, the motor must take the horse’s place in the stable, and the teamster and the waggoner must become mechanicians or turn aside. The large farmer, counting his acres by the hundreds, may say he has not been indifferent to tlie advantages'’ of mechanical power, but the employment of steam has evolved a capital outlay such as nothing, but extensive operations would justify. The need has been for some cheaper ad- ' aptation of mechanism to the mani- ' fold operations of the farmer’s year, and 1 the display at the show proves that the . need is at last ■ being met. There are motors of many kinds here, but there is one which deserves to be discussed, because, by the admission of all judges, it leads tbe way to the new system. For ages uncountable men have themselves) drawn the plough, or have harnessed- to it tlieir. cattle and their 'horses. Henceforward tbe engine only will rattle in tbe furrows, and the farmer will be all the better for it. The pioneer of the aptplication of ■ AUTOMO'BILISiM TO AGRICULTURE is Mr Dun Albone. of Biggleswade, and. his “Tvel” agricultural motor is aston- ' , ishing all farmers who witnessed the dis* ; play of its powers. It is a simple, compact machine, weighing about 23cwt., end -as the weight is distributed over | three wheels, it makes very little impress

sion on the land, so that in cultivating operations it is claimed the damage done by tlio motor is less tthan that by torsos. - The road wheels are broad, and provided . w ith grips, so that it cannot skid, and the*steering wheel at the front is easily controlled. It is applicable to every form of implement at present drawn by horses; it will pull a two or three-furrow plough, the harrows and souffles, the mowing and reaping and binding machines. When it has cut the corn it will draw the waggon loads home' to the stack yard, then it will harness itself to the threshing mill or the chaff cutter or the root-pulping machine and finally it will hurry the goods off to market, and . it will do all this more rapidly and more cheaply than it can be done at the i-present time with horses. ' A •- 'v When it is not wanted for the field work it will drive a dynamo or a pump, and'when it is not wanted at all it asks for nothing-to eat. It will work without a sign of- exhaustion through the longest end hottest summer’s day, and it mil bear, without a sign of asthma or congestion, the blasts of winter; It small and compact, yet its doublecylinder petrol engine develops 14-h.p., andgtthe machine looks in its casing, much like one end of a flat-bottomed boat upside down on wheels. What has it done to justify its claims as the forerunner of a revolution? It* has lately taken part in several ploughing matches against the most expert ploughmen of' the district; with two, three,, and even four horses, and it has beaten them allhollow for cheapness and celerity, and rivalled the work even of the most dexterous. No matter how bad the weather may, have made the ground its broad wheels will. find an easy way,' and it makes light of a triple-furrowed plough, doing three- times the work of the ? old variety. In one of these matches>four horse ploughs could only turn about half an acre each, while the "Ivel” with a douhl e-fur row plough turned over three acres in the same time with a consumption of seven gallons of -petrol. A two-horse plough seldom does more than an acre in a working day; but the “Iveß* has ploughed six acres in eight hours at a cost of five shillings an .acre. This, if you will work it out. enables the work to be done six times as quickly as horses can do it and 100 per cent, cheaper. It. ploughs with the double furrow at about four miles an hour, while two and three horses cannot get upr a higher speed than two miles; it turns easily at the end of the furrows, v and- the plough i» in all ways as manageable as though horses were harnessed to it, : IN THE HARVEST FIELD it is equally successful, for with an ordinary reaper and binder .it has cut 19 acres of corn in hours at a cost, ex- " elusive of an allowance for wear and tear, of two shillings an acre. There were last year in this country about million acres of corn; and 8 million acres of hay, and assuming that the motor would save even a quarter of the cost of the labour of preparing and gathering these crops, it is easy to see what an immense economy would be effected. Last autumn it ploughed, according to certificates, for two successive days on a farm at Biggleswade, turning 11J acres in less tharj, 174 hours, at a cost of 5s an acre, including the attendants* time eand every outlay; it cut 32 acres of wheat • for Is 9d an acre; it cut six acres of grass in 3 hours 40 minutes f for Is 9d an acre; and it cut 2Hcwts. of chaff in 47 minutes for half-a-crown. Clearly thi3 is Something of IMMENSE IMPORTANCE TO , FARMERS.

Horse labour is expensive, horses are liable to illness and accident, and eat a great deal of expensive food. AH the motor needs is petrol, a little water, some oil for lubrication, and reasonable pare., Moreover, the intelligent labourer on the field can soon learn to ? work it, and even to understand its mechanism. The trouble of the farmer at the present time- in the busy seasons of the yeat- * is the scantiness of the labour supply; this machine will make him to a large extent independent of that diffi- . culty. Even if its labour were no cheaper than that of horses and men, its greater celerity would make it valuable in a climate such as ours). Fine periods are often rudely interrupted by inclement, weather when certain of the harvest operations are out of the question, and the farmer consequently loses much of that for which he has ploughed and sown. If with this machine he can do in two fine days that which now .occupies a week the risk of loss owing to, bad weather is much less, and he has the greater chance of putting his crops On the market in their best condition. No matter from which point of view -.one looks at the question the advantage of the motor over the present methods is obvious. It is not only immensely cheaper in its work, but much more rapid, it is much cheaper in upkeep than

horses, and. must cause less anxiety, and it can be applied to purposes where the horse is useless, in addition to doing everything that a horse can do. True, the farmer cannot ride to hounds on it, but it may save him 'enough to make a decent hunter a justifiable luxury in his diminished stable.—Exchange.