Agricultural Motors.
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The growth of interest in the Canadian trials for agricultural motors, evidence of which is provided in the course of the report from our special correspondent, Mr. A. Runless Greig, which appeals elsewhere in this issue, should prove an incentive to the Council and Officers of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. At Liverpool, in June next, the first considerable series of testa will be held in this country, and an opportunity will be afforded to designers and manufacturers to rival the performances which are now on record in Canada. It was foreseen by us, 3i years ago, that there must sooner or later be wide appreciation of the greet importance of the Canadian market, and of the outlet for agricultural motors which its natural conditions favoured, and we are naturally gratified that the views upheld in our issue of the 29th March, 1906, should have been justified to the letter. We have not omitted, in the interval which has elapsed, to point out to British manufacturers the expediency of their laying out to share this large trade. It is not necessarily of much account that they tail to securefirst prizes in competitions: the trade is still there to be done. Large-scale plans and arrangements for reasonable finance are, of course, requisites to successful competition, but these factors are accepted in other branches of trade which the great agricultural-engineering firms of this country have made peculiarly their own for so many decades. The old view, that ploughing by mechanical power is hopeless where the hashing unit itself travels over the land,. is slowly but surely being broken down. In Canada and the United States, at least, they believe in the value of the lighter and up-to-date types, for they perceive that the heavy ploughing engines cannot he universally adopted, however economical and effective cross-hauling may be where conditions allow it. The old school of steam engineers admittedly has had cause to scoff at seine of the efforts in the direction of internalcombustion-engined agricultural motors, but these maclimes cannot for any longer, if due regard be paid to proved achievement, be looked open as toys. They, in common with allied systems of road-transport vehicles, have passed through the period of experiment, and are in fact, rapidly moving out of probationary use into the region of regular and standardized service on the land. Their first cost, too, is very reasonable in relation to any steam-ploughing outfit, with its two engines and heavy winding gear, though we by no means forecast their disuse in many existing cases of employment..