more live and thrive with its feet in the wet and cold than a man can. Deep ploughing and thorough drainage allow the air more completely to permeate al! parts of the soil, which aids greatly in warming and pulverizing the ground, and stimulates a healthy growth of the plant, both in its early germination, and in its successive progress and fruitage. The beautiful and healthful operation of producing a kindly, fertile soil, as all intelligent testimony assures us, can in no other way be so surely and economically accomplished as by the employment of steam cultivation.

STEAM PLOUGHING IN LOUISIANA.

BY H. E. LAWRENCE, LOUISIANA.

From time immemorial, or at least from the period when Elisha of old was summoned from behind his primitive plough, and his team of 12 yoke of oxen, to assume the functions of prophet and teacher for the Hebrew people, until within the last few years, no practical efforts have been successfully made to supersede the old ox and horse system of cultivation by steam ploughing machinery. When we consider that but a few years have elapsed since steam cultivation was only an idea; that the inventors had no previous models or similar appliances to work from, but had first to discover the principles and then apply them in all their details to the invention of proper machinery, the present developed condition of the steam plough is truly wonderful.

How well the English manufacturers and inventors have succeeded in introducing and perfecting the steam plough, their statistics show. In 1860 there were over 500 sets of steam ploughing machinery working for the farmers, but how many are at present in use I have no positive means of knowing, and can only say that the manufacturers' No. of sets of steam ploughing machinery imported into Louisiana in December, 1867, and now working on Magnolia plantation, is 918, showing that nearly 1,000 sets of steam plowing machines. have been manufactured by the house of John Fowler & Co. alone.

The English farmers have outstripped our people in the successful use of the steam plough for breaking up and cultivating their farm lands. The rongh stony counties of many of the chalk and stiff clay lands, where the undulations are from 30 to 50 feet, are now cultivated by the steam plough. The old Viceroy of Egypt, a Bedouin Arab, a man of great sagacity and enterprise, imported, several years since, over 200 sets of the most approved steam ploughing machinery, with which he breaks up and ploughs more than 300,000 acres yearly of the lands upon the river Nile, and plants them in cotton, rice, and sugar cane.

All market gardeners and the best practical farmers and cultivators agree that deep trenching or spade husbandry produces a much larger yield of crops of all kinds than any other known system, the chief advantage being in a thorough breaking up, loosening, and perfect admixture of the soil. This most desirable object can be accomplished much better and more cheaply by the steam plough than by the spade or by any other known implement. All English farmers familiar with the use of the steam plough agree that the surface water will not stand upon lands broken up by this plough. On the sandy lands near Cheltenham, England, the market gardeners, to prevent their crops from suffering from drought, spade the ground from 20 to 30 inches deep. By this means the lands. which would be dried up in hot seasons, are not affected injuriously by dry weathera fact worth knowing to the market gardeners in New Jersey and elsewhere. The majority of the lands in the United States, if put under steam plough

cultivation, and kept free from the treading and kneading of the soil by the horses' feet, would only require one deep breaking up and ploughing every fifth year, and would then be left in identically the same condition as if dug up with a spade.

There have been but two sets of first-class steam ploughing machinery imported into the United States. One is at work near Decatur, on the great prairies of Illinois;, the other is in Louisiana, at work on the Magnolia sugar plantation, about 40 miles below New Orleans. They are of the same size, power, and dimensions, as follows: two 14-horse power, double cylinder traction (or locomotive) engines, each having self-moving and reversing gear, water tanks, steerage, with road wheels 22 inches wide, winding drum, and patent, self-acting cooling gear, spuds, tools and tool boxes complete, and ready for cultivating the soil. There are also included 800 yards of steel wire rope, one six-furrow balance wheeled plough, One seven-tine pulverizer or sub-soiler, balanced and on wheels.

The entire machinery complete cost in England £1,500. Each of the locomotives or traction engines weighs 10 tons, without coal or water. The engines are driven to the roads or head lands, where they stand on opposite sides of the field, and haul those great balance-wheeled cultivators or ploughs back and forth at a speed of over four miles an hour, or faster than a man can walk.

The engines, ploughs, and the entire steam ploughing machinery are worked and managed with the greatest ease and facility, going over bridges and ditches, moving and turning as easily and speedily as a six-horse team.

The old "plantation hands" very soon learn how to run the machines, and, after a few weeks, are trusted with the entire management, being divided and placed as follows: one man to each engine, who keeps his machine in order, does his own firing, greasing, &c.; two go with the steam plough, one to steer and one to aid in case of stumps or obstructions, and one boy, with a cart and team of three mules, hauls the coals and water for both engines. Each engine consumes seven barrels of coal for a day of 10 hours. The coal costs in Louisiana, delivered on the land alongside of the levee, 65 cents per barrel.

The usual task in England of a set of first-class steam ploughing machinery is eight acres per day of 10 hours. The sub-soiler or pulverizer will work over from 12 to 15 acres per day, breaking, stirring, and tearing it up from 15 to 18 inches deep. The cost of ploughing in Louisiana, running 14 inches deep through the toughest and most sticky soil ever seen by man, is about as follows, allowing for a sinking fund and interest upon first cost, about 20 per cent. per year for both items:

Labor of four men and one boy, per day.

Fourteen barrels of coal, at 65 cents

Use of water, cart, and three-mule team.

Oil, cotton waste, and gum packing

Current expenses per day....

Add 10 per cent. per year on the first cost, say $11,000, greenbacks, for wear and tear per day..

Ten per cent. for interest on cost..

$5.00 9 10

2.50

1 40

18 00

5 00

5 00

28 00

This allowance is much too large; making the cost for each acre of land broken up and ploughed 14 inches deep, $3 50, not a very high price for such ploughing.

The census returns for 1860 show the money value of the products of the whole people of Massachusetts to be $243 per head for each man, woman, and child; while in the State of South Carolina, by the same returns, the money

value of the labor of the whole population is $56 per head. And why and what is the cause of this astounding difference? The answer is simply that Massachu setts runs her machines by the aid of skilled labor and steam engines; South Carolina runs her machines by horse power and unskilled manual labor. What say you, farmers and grain raisers, east and west, will you give a good reason why your grain and wheat crops fall short, year after year, until your yield does not average one-half of former years? Would not steam ploughing machinery, that would tear up, pulverize, deep-trench, and plough your lands, turning up a new virgin soil in the place of your old, worn-out fields and farms, make you feel as though big grain crops were again within your grasp?

The first cost of steam ploughing machinery is of very little importance, pr vided the quantity of work it is capable of performing is in accordance with the outlay. The most important consideration of all is to economize manual labor, which is daily becoming scarcer and more difficult to procure. The steam plough of the first class, as above described, with proper management, will do as much work daily as 30 horses. In prairie lands, where there are no stumps, stones, or obstructions, it will be readily perceived that a steam engine, propelling four or six ploughs, eight or ten inches deep, at a rate of four miles per hour, can easily break up 15 or 20 acres daily, or in 10 working hours.

In England very many of the steam ploughing machines are owned an worked by stock companies; and they travel over the rough and hilly agricultural counties in England, and plough and break up the farm lands for the farmer for hire, charging from 5s. to 15s. per acre for the work, on precisely the same principle as the great threshing machines in the west travel from farm to farm and from county to county, through the working season. The first-class steam plough will average, one year with another, 1,500 acres of land per season.

CLIMATE OF THE PACIFIC COAST.

By Prof. E. C. MERRICK, WASHINGTON, D. C.

From the analogies of continental position, the climates of our Pacific coast are, in fundamental character, closely assimilated to those of the western coast of the eastern continent. Among the more striking points of resemblance ny be noted the abrupt northern deflection of the isothermal curves. A single example from Blodgett's charts will sufficiently illustrate this point.

The annual isotherm of 50° Fahrenheit passing through London, England. latitude 51° 30′ north, is depressed southward more than 10° in crossing the Atlantic, striking the American coast near New York city, latitude 40° 42′ north. The northern deflection of this isotherm on the European coast is obviously the result of the system of warm-water currents springing from the Gulf Strea These currents bear the heated waters of the tropical seas diagonally across t Atlantic, ameliorating the rugged northern coast climates of Europe, and place them upon a par with opposite American coast climates, at least 10 degies further south.

The same isotherm of 50° Fahrenheit passes nearly west across the Ameri continent to longitude 103° west, where the elevation of the Rocky mounta plateau causes it to dip suddenly southward as far as the latitude of Santa Fe thence crossing the Rocky mountains westwardly it trends northwest, almost allel with the Pacific coast, to the north end of Vancouver's island, latitude 30′ north, about the same northing as upon the European coast. Mr. Blodgets later examination of the meterological observations made in Alaska by the Ru

sian government during a series of years, presents remarkable confirmations of this northward tendency of the isotherms on our western coast. The annual isotherm of 40° Fahrenheit, coasting northward through the southern part of Alaska, curves westwardly across the peninsula to the northward of the Aleutian islands, and bends rapidly southward on approaching the Asiatic coast.

Maury, in his "Physical Geography of the Sea," indicated the cause of this isothermal elevation in a system of warm-water currents, similar to the Atlantic Gulf Stream, and its branches. Only the rudimentary points of the Pacific system of currents were then known; but Maury's theory has since been amply verified by later and very careful observation. Captain Kerhallet, of the French imperial navy, in his "General Examination of the Pacific Ocean," has clearly traced the analogue of the Atlantic Gulf Stream in the "Japan current" of navigators, called by the Japanese themselves "Kuro Siwo," or black stream, from its dark color, in which, as well as in other remarkable points, it strongly resembles its Atlantic congener.

This Japanese current, or Kuro Siwo, results from two currents of heated water from the Indian ocean, one passing through the straits of Malacca and the China sea, and the other skirting the eastern coast of the Philippine islands, at the northern extremity of which they unite opposite the Japan islands; this united current again divides its main branch, trending east-northeast, strikes our Pacific coast about midway between Vancouver's island and Sitka island. The waters of the current near its southern edge, latitude 21° 20′ north, longitude 163° 20′ west, were found by M. De Tessau, commander of the French frigate Venus, to be 4° 30′ Fahrenheit hotter than those just outside the current; a difference which would have been much greater if the observation had been made with water from the main axial line of the current.

navy,

On the 24th of January, 1856, Lieutenant Silas Bent, United States read before the American Geographical and Statistical Society of New York a very learned and able memoir upon the Kuro Siwo, from which the following passages

are taken:

The softening influence of the Kuro Siwo is felt on the coasts of Oregon and California, but in a less degree, perhaps, than that of the Gulf Stream on the coasts of Europe, owing to the greater width of the Pacific; still the winters are so mild in Puget sound, latitude 480 north, that snow rarely falls there, and the inhabitants are never able to fill their ice houses for the summer; and vessels trading at Petropaulovski, and the coast of Kamschatka, when becoming unwieldly from the accumulation of ice on their hulls and rigging, run over to a higher latitude on the American coast, and thaw out in the same manner as vessels frozen up on our (Atlantic) coast retreat to the Gulf Stream until favored by an easterly wind.

The impact of the Kuro Siwo upon our western coast is more feeble, on account of the greater mass of intervening ocean water, than the impact of the Atlantic Gulf Stream upon the European coast, and consequently it is less potential in directly elevating temperatures. But any deficiency resulting from this cause is amply compensated by the narrowness of Behring's strait, through which a much smaller volume of floating ice and cold Arctic waters is discharged than those immense masses of both which sweep down into the Atlantic, rapidly absorbing the heat brought up by the Gulf Stream. The projecting peninsula of Alaska, with its out-lying islands, also deflects far to the westward the reactionary arctic currents, and protects our western climates from their depressing influence. The southeast winds, laden with moisture from the tropical atmosphere of the ocean, prevail along the coast during the winter or rainy season. Their latent heat, set free by precipitation, combines with general influence of the Kuro Siwo in elevating the temperature and bending northward the isothermals. These facts are sufficient to show why Puget sound is on a par with New York city, while British Columbia and the southern part of Alaska are found within the same climatic parallels as northern New York and New England.

There are, however, some very remarkable and important minor variations from the coast climates of Europe, in those of our Pacific coast.

These are

.

especially appreciable in the sensible climate, and in all its practical relations. First, there is found along the Pacific coast an unexpected lowering of the nor mal curve of temperature through successive hours of the day, and through snccessive months of the year. In other words, the theoretic temperature, which should have resulted from known conditions, is modified and depressed by canses hitherto unsuspected, but now matter of both common and scientific observation. Among the cases of this hitherto departure from the theoretic standard is found the peculiar play of the oceanic currents. In its passage through the immense volume of the Pacific ocean the Kuro Siwo has parted with its surplus heat, and has also incorporated some of the cold waters of the reactionary arctic currents; while it has raised the general temperature of both air and sea it has become a current of comparatively cold water itself. On reaching our coast it divides itself into two branches, one of which flows along the coasts of Oregon and California, sensibly depressing the local climates of the coast. This depressing influ ence is particularly appreciable in such localities as San Francisco and Monterey, producing a degree of cold in midsummer which is felt as a harsh, abrupt and unnatural displacement of normal conditions. It is reinforced by the cool northwest winds prevailing from June to November. The scope of this reactive tendency, however, is limited to the local climates of the coast.

Another and very important difference between the climates of our Pacific coast and those of Europe is found in the comparatively narrow range of barometric and thermometric oscillation. These are but the scientific expression of those conditions of majestic equability which first suggested the name Pacific, a name the significance and appropriateness of which become more striking as ou knowledge of it increases. For this very remarkable exception from extremes of variations our western coast is indebted to the great width of the Pacific ocean. The hurricanes generated in that mighty cauldron of atmospheric forces the Gulf Stream, are hurled across the narrower volume of the Atlantic with a force sufficient to be severely felt upon the coast of Europe. Storms entirely analogous, and accompanied by electric and calorific changes equally marked, prevail upon the Asiatic coast, and have been traced some distance along the Kuro Siwo; but the mighty mass of the Pacific waters calmly absorbs their fury, and prevents their disturbing force from reaching our shores. The atmospheric changes of the Pacific coast are consequently more uniform and of minor range. Comparing the averages of winter and summer temperature along the isothermal line of 50° Fahrenheit, the variations on the Atlantic coast are found to be double those on the Pacific. As a specimen of extreme variation a little further south, it may be stated that the mean range of winter temperature at San Fran cisco from the mean of July is only 8° 30′ Fahrenheit, whereas the variation at Washington, D. C., is 44° 30′ Fahrenheit, or more than five times as great. This absence of disturbing meteorological forces, as indicated by this narrow range of barometric and of thermometric oscillations, is sufficient to account for that freedom from explosive electricity which enables the climate of California to meet so accurately the delicate requirements of the silk culture. The deficiency of electrical excitement, and especially the absence of atmospheric concussion, with other favorable conditions, secure the practicability of. four crops of silk-worms during the growing season; a fact the influence of which upon the productive industry of the country is beyond all present estimate.

A still more prominent point of difference between our Pacific climates and those of Europe is found in the periodicity of rain. The arrangement of the year into two seasons, wet and dry, instead of four, is found only in the lower Latitudes of Europe and Africa. On the Pacific coast it is observable, north of the Columbia river, as far as the 48th parallel. Nearly all the rain of Cali fornia falls between November and June. According to Blodgett's hyetal charts, the annual fall of rain in that State is about 22 inches, decreasing southward to the Colorado desert, where it amounts to almost nothing. In the northern