In the above, two bullocks to drag the plough or digger are evidently contemplated. My experience is, that two draught cattle cannot be used, simply because there is not room for them between the lines of Tea.[95] If animal power is used, it must be a single bullock alone. How to harness a single bullock to the plough is the question. A collar with a hinge below, which allows it to open at top, may be put on from below, and then the sides fastened together at the top. But I advise another plan, which I have seen most successfully practised in Austria. The traces, joining together, and thus becoming one behind the bullock, are fastened to the horns, and tightly connected with a leather pad across the animal’s forehead. The bullock thus pulls by his head, and I am sure he can pull in no more efficient or easier way to himself. Bullocks in pairs, or singly, are thus harnessed for plough work in Austria, and I have seen single animals dragging ploughs of much greater weight and power than we should require in our Tea gardens.
Given a proper plough, and I feel sure a large strong bullock thus harnessed would be successful.
A really good Tea garden plough has yet to be invented. All that is necessary is to give some agricultural machinists here at home the conditions necessary for success, and I predict what we want would be soon forthcoming. I will myself try to do so, let others do the same; one of us is sure to succeed.
I give all these extracts to show that many think as I do.
Cultivation with ploughs of any kind can never be feasible except on flat land. The hill gardens in India must in no case hope to introduce it; but I sincerely trust the planters in India who own level gardens will not rest till they have solved the problem, and that Messrs. Kinmond, Jackson, and other inventors of Tea machinery will give their valuable aid. The following two letters from the Tea Gazette show the difficulties to be encountered in steam cultivation:—
Steam Cultivation for Tea.
Sir,—As promised in your last issue, I now write to say that I have received from England the catalogues and price lists of Messrs. Howard, of Bedford, Messrs. Barford and Perkins, and other makers of steam ploughing machinery. Messrs. Howard seem to think that the greatest difficulty would be in lifting the return rope over the bushes. This would be certainly a difficulty, but the idea of steam cultivation for Tea is so valuable that it is well worth while thinking this out. I will in your first issue for January give a resumé of all the information gleaned from the illustrated catalogues and the letters from the engineers at home on the subject of steam ploughing, and will then be glad to co-operate with any gentlemen interested in Tea by giving my professional opinion and assistance without fee in endeavouring to solve this matter. I trust, should I ever have to write another series of articles on Tea machinery for the Tea Gazette, the steam plough may figure as one of the machines which I will have to describe as in use on Tea gardens.
Meanwhile the principal difficulty in the way seems to be the shifting of the long wire pulling rope over the row of bushes. Let those interested in the subject try to devise a speedy and economical method of doing this.—Yours, &c.,