Year: 1878

other countries in this depart


ment; and after a few hours


study of the English annex one


cannot help being impressed by


the great progress made by the


mother country in the inyen-


ton and perfection of ponder


Gus agricultural machines. The


application of steam to agricul-


ture is of comparative recent


introduction, and, indeed, may


be said to date from scarcely 30
years ago; but the idea is old,


and many clear sighted men


seem to have long foreseen its
final adoption. The reasons of


the tardy application of steam
to branch of industry in which
it has proved so effective, and,
in fact the relatively recent leap,
SO to speak, which all agricul-
tural machinery made, about
the time steam plowing came
into fashion, is probably to be
sought not so much in the char
acter of the machinery itself as


in change of the social condi-
tion of the countries in which
a demand for high class machine
ry has arisen. When labor is
cheap and the cultivation of the
soil is what writer's call "inten-
siye" rather than "extensive,"
the outlay of capital for new
inventions is out of the ques-
ton owing to the low price of


grain. But in the last few
years there have been, so to
speak, great revolutions in the


labor of certain parts Of Europe.
In Southern Russia, for instance,
the demand for agricultural ma


chinery has arisen chiefly from
the emancipation of the Serfs, a
revolution which has resulted
in a state of things similar, it
seems, to that of Ireland. The
peasant is satisfied to live or
the little property that has fall
en- to his share and has left the
great proplietors in the difficult
position of having much land
and great demand for its pro-
ducts, but no laborers. In Hun
gary there is also a demand for
steam driven plows. In France
and parts of Germany the soil
is SO divided up into minute
farms that want of capital pre-
vents the purchase of expensive
implements by individual hold
ers. England, Notwithstanding
the fact that she has an advanced
system of working the land is
not an agricultural country, and
is becoming every year less of
a grain \growing one; but her
implements have done much to
revolutionize the methods in
other countries, and at this Ex-
hibition they take in some re-
spects the first position. 1t
seems as if England, having
satisfied her own wants, has
turned her inventive faculty
chiefly to those of the foreigner.
Nearly every exhibitor in the
British Agricultural annex has
this or that apparatus adapted
to special requirements of one
country or another, and a visit
to this annex, with the aid at
different stands of the represen-
tatives of the firms exhibiting,
is, | need scarcely add, very in
teresting. Someof these gem
tlemen have spent years in the
countries for which their sever
al machines are made, and their
explanations are, in many cases,
a fresh page In the history OF
husbandry. This is indeed a
feature of the department. in
question, and, added to the uni
form courtesy with which every
inquiry is at once replied to by
all from the chief to the porter,


much contrasts with the state


of things in the French branch,


where it is rare to find the per-


son in charge of the machine,


and who, when he is found, is
IN a filter state to receive infor-