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trial nine horses, three to a plow, with three drivers and three boys, did the work at a total cost of eight dollars and twenty-eight cents or at the rate of three dollars and sixty-eight cents per acre. By steam power the total cost of plowing the same area amounted to a total of nine dollars and eight cents or at four dollars and eight cents per acre, and with the gasoline motor the cost totalled four dollars and forty-four cents or at one dollar and ninety-seven cents per acre. Recapitulating, the steam cost highest, being slightly over four dollars per acre. Horses were next at forty cents an acre less and last was gasoline costing but slightly over half that of horses and not half so much as steam. In the case of the gasoline motor, twenty-four cents were needed for oil and two dollars and fiftytwo cents for gasoline. For plowing purposes a three-furrowed plow is invariably used, except in heavy clay soils, where a couple of furrows prove sufficient.

A few examples will show the working quality of the new motor in amateur hands. In one instance three and a quarter acres of clay soil were plowed in four hours and thirteen minutes, the furrow being seven and a half inches deep. In this work eight gallons of paraffin were needed, being two gallons to the acre. On another occasion, six acres plowed in eight hours with a three-furrow plow; and twelve acres in seventeen hours, twenty-five gallons of gasoline being used in doing the last job. plow six acres in a day of eight hours is a regular performance, the same work requiring a two-horse team six days on the same heavy soil.

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Having won its spurs in the plowing competition, the agricultural motor was ready for other contests. Mowing or cutting hay and clover offered special inducements for trials. At these the English machine cut fifteen and three-quarter acres in three and a half hours, pulling two mowing machines, each cutting a swath six feet in width. The work required but six and a half gallons of gasoline, which at American prices, would mean but eight cents an acre for fuel. In one test, it drew three mowing machines each cutting a swath six feet wide, and worked steadily for two days and one night, acetylene lights being used

for the night work. In drawing two or three mowing machines, by means of a continuous pole connection, the three machines pull with remarkable regularity taking the corners without missing or overlapping and cutting clear swaths in the stretches.

Detailed enumeration of the many other performances of the agricultural motor would but show its perfect adaptation for the work and its marked economy. With ease it pulls after it two self binders, with which it cuts and binds, in ten hours, nineteen acres of heavy wheat, using in the work eighteen gallons of gasoline. In one case, with a couple of similar self binders, it cut fifteen acres of oats in four hours, travelling during the entire time at six miles per hour. With

one of these motors in use a Belgian farmer harvested one hundred acres of wheat in two days and one night, the motor never stopping except to take on fuel and oil the binders. In another test, oats were cut at an expense of twentyfour cents per acre for gasoline and oil, figures which show work done at less than half the cost of doing it where horses are used.

When not required in the fields, its usefulness is shown elsewhere. With the drive wheels disconnected from the motor, by a friction clutch, it become a stationary engine, driving the largest size of threshing machine with ease equal to that of the steam engine and at half the expense; cutting the farmer's straw into chaff at a rate of a ton in forty-five minutes, and at a saving of two dollars per day; breaking stones; and in general performing those duties ordinarily accomplished by the ponderous traction engine. Compared with the traction engine, speed is its greatest advantage. In a test with such an engine the agricultural motor drew its threshing machine into position and backed into its own position and was threshing, before the traction engine had reached its proper location. The threshing done, it drew the machine behind it over the rural roads, taking the grades over the railroad tracks without apparent trouble.

Of late the most novel uses to which it has been put are the cultivation of vineyards and the planting of potatoes and other tubers and roots. As the illustra

AGRICULTURAL MOTOR DRAWING A LAND CULTIVATOR.

tion shows, when engaged in the planting of potatoes, it performs at one time. a three-fold duty, plowing a furrow in which the potatoes are to be planted, placing the potatoes the required distance apart in this furrow and then covering them by turning another furrow. Two men perform the operation, one caring for the motor and the other attending to the planter. Three and one-half acres of potatoes per day are planted with ease. Not less interesting in vine culture is the use of cultivators for tilling the soil between the rows of vines and later the drawing of a sprinkler between these rows, thus protecting the vines against insects or cleansing the fruit with clear water before picking.

But the ingenious farmer, realizing that to make the agricultural motor profitable, it must be kept in continual service, has, in fulfilling this aim, introduced it to the most unexpected aspects of farm life. In forest lands it has served in logging, pulling heavy logs through

underbrush and rough places; in similar places its power, belted to a circular saw, has cut the season's firewood in a short time; again it is employed for churning butter and chopping roots.

On the road it has made continuous trips of three hundred miles at an average speed of six miles per hour, a faster speed not being possible because of the broad driving wheels, which, however, can be replaced with narrower ones when higher speeds are desired. In Melbourne, Australia, an agricultural motor, belonging to a large estate, draws seventon loads to market at a four-mile an hour pace, and another, in the service of a contractor, transports, by means of a couple of wagons linked behind it, fifteen hundred bricks, weighing five and a half tons, from the brick yards to the depot at the rate of five miles per hour.

Apart from its economy of fuel and operation compared with horses, the agricultural motor possesses that all essential requisite-speed-so paramount at times in farming. In favorable spring weather, grains should be sown as early as possible, yet, with horse-labor, days prolong themselves into weeks before all of the seeding is accomplished. With the motor, and its night and day ability, the period of seeding is cut in two and often shortened more than this. And when harvest comes, grains are cut when ripe, avoiding the necessity of leaving portions standing until overripe or endangered by heavy storms. On American farms, labor is scarce and in such

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SPRAYING A VINEYARD WITH AN AGRICULTURAL MOTOR FOR POWER.

This machine is used in grape and hop culture.

cases the agricultural motor is a great boon, enabling the farmer to till immense areas without outside assistance. It is this quick work at important seasons that adds much value to the new motor.

Its worth being apparent, the question is whether farmers farmers will quickly adopt such power machinery? To them the gasoline motor is not new. Of late years the largest harvesting machinery house. of the central states has been selling to the farmers upwards of four thousand gasoline engines each year, these machines being principally used in threshing and grinding grain. This acquaintance on the part of the agricultural classes with gasoline engines is sufficient

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MOTOR DRAWING THREE-FURROW PLOW AT A SPEED OF FOUR MILES per Hour. Each furrow is 10 inches wide and 6 inches deep.

to warrant a speedy introduction, when the agricultural motor is once fairly presented. Indications are that the introduction will be made soon and rapidly. Within the last month the makers of the English machine have sold the patent rights of manufacture for the United States and Canada and arrangements are being pushed for the securing of factory sites and a publicity campaign has begun. Should its progress prove as rapid as that of the motor car, in another decade farm work will have undergone a revolution and our Kansas wheat fields will scarcely know the horse, the vast areas of the

Dakotas will have bowed the knee to the motor and the New England hillsides will have acknowledged its prowess.

There is, in the appearance of the agricultural motor at the present moment, a reminder of the truth that most things come at their proper and appointed time. Today, with the exhausting of fuel on the farms, with the scarcity of help and with the necessity for fast work, the motor is badly needed. Its predecessor, steam, having proved inefficient for such uses, is falling into disrepute, leaving free way for the gasoline or alcohol engine.

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