That under the terms sowing-machine, _semoir_, drill-plough, _macchine
per seminare_, are understood implements by which the seeds of those
plants cultivated on a large scale, and particularly the different
species of corn, can be regularly deposited in the earth, and at any
distance from each other, at pleasure, is at present generally known.
The principal part of the machine consists of a box, having within it
a cylinder furnished with cogs, which forms the axes of two wheels,
and which, as it revolves, assists the seed put into the box to escape
through holes formed at a proper distance from each other in the bottom.
At first, these machines were exceedingly simple, and had only in the
fore-part a ploughshare; but afterwards a harrow was applied behind, so
that with such an apparatus one could plough, sow, and harrow at the
same time. It was attended, however, with the common fault of all very
complex machines; it was too artificial, too expensive, and too easily
deranged. The greater part, therefore, of those lately made have only a
harrow behind them.
Since the beginning of the last century so many machines of this kind
have been invented, that to give a complete catalogue of them would be
difficult. The invention, however, does not belong either to our period
or to the English, who have hitherto paid the greatest attention to the
improvement and employment of it. I have somewhere read that a proposal
for a machine of this kind occurs in Theophrastus; but I have not yet
been able to discover the passage. I am much rather inclined, from the
information I have hitherto obtained, to place this invention in the
sixteenth century, and to ascribe the merit of it to the Italians.
By our oldest writers on agriculture, Heresbach, Colerus, Florinus,
Hohberg and others, it is not mentioned.
Joseph Locatelli, of whom, however, very little is known, is commonly
considered as the inventor. That he was a nobleman of Carinthia, but
not a count, as he is called in Iöcher’s Dictionary of Learned Men,
is proved by a small work consisting of two sheets in quarto, now in
my possession[552]. It is there stated, that experiments were made
with a machine of this kind by the emperor’s order, at the imperial
palace and market of Laxenburg, in the presence of a commissioner,
named Pietro Bonaventura von Crollolanza, appointed for that purpose.
These experiments succeeded so well, that a crop of sixty for one was
obtained from land not manured, and subject to frequent inundation.
On this account the emperor rewarded the inventor, and sent him with
letters of recommendation to the king of Spain.
In this small work no date is mentioned but on the title-page; and if
that be correct, the invention must be placed in the last year of the
sixteenth or the first of the seventeenth century, consequently in
the reign of the emperor Rudolphus II., who had a great fondness for
mechanical inventions. This treatise is certainly the same which, as
Reinman says, was printed in 1690 without any place being mentioned,
and according to Haller, at Jena, 1690; but the author of it cannot
have been the inventor, as asserted by Iöcher, who adds, that the tract
in question was printed at Vienna in the year above-mentioned.
The date 1603, however, can hardly be correct; it ought rather to
be 1693, and in that case the tract might have been three times
printed between that period and 1690. The date in the title-page of
my copy appears properly to have in it a 9, which resembles a zero,
only because the compositor used a type on which the lower part of
the figure was broke. That this conjecture is true, I have, I think,
sufficiently proved; though Munchhausen, Haller, and others read the
date 1603.
In the year 1669, John Evelyn gave to the Royal Society of London a
complete description of Locatelli’s invention[553]. He there says
that the inventor went with his machine to Spain, where he proved
the advantage of it by public experiments, and described them in a
Spanish work, dedicated to Geronimo de Camargo, member of the _Consejo
real de Castilla_, who was commissioned by the king to make known and
promote the use of this machine, the sale of which was secured to the
inventor at a price fixed in his patent. This Spanish work, from which
Evelyn made an extract, was printed with the Austrian approbation of
Crollolanza, and the date Aug. 1st, 1663. Locatelli must immediately
after have gone to Spain, for it is there stated that his machines were
made and sold in great abundance at Madrid, in 1664. The invention
belongs, therefore, to the year 1663.
This machine was exceedingly simple. The seed-box, the cylinder of
which was furnished with two small wheels, required only to be hooked
or fastened, by means of ropes, to the stilt of the plough. A figure
of it may be found in the before-mentioned German tract; also in the
Philosophical Transactions, and thence copied into Duhamel’s Traité de
la Culture des Terres[554].
The Italians, however, dispute with Locatelli the honour of the
invention. They assert that one of their countrymen, named M. Giovanni
Cavallina, of Bologna, proposed such a sowing-machine a century and a
half before; and they refer for a proof to the account preserved by
Gio Battista Segni in his work upon Scarcity. This book I have never
seen. Haller gives the title from Seguier, and says that it was first
printed at Bologna, in 1602; but Zanon states 1605, and says that this
Segni, who is not noticed by Iöcher, was a _canonicus regularis_[555].
Of Cavallina I have not been able to find any further account; not even
in the large and full work of Fantuzzi. I can therefore give only the
description of Segni as transcribed by Zanon[556]. From this it appears
that the machine alluded to had also a seed-box with two wheels, and
might be compared to a bolting-mill, but below each hole of the bottom
board there seems to have been an iron funnel, which before was shaped
like a plough-share. The machine, therefore, seems to have formed as
many small furrows as it dropped grains of corn; and, as far as can be
judged, there was in the bottom only one row of holes. It appears also
that each grain of corn, as soon as it dropped, was covered with earth
by the machine. Whether Locatelli took advantage of this invention,
and gave it out, with some alteration, as his own, cannot be easily
determined.
Soon after Locatelli’s invention another sowing-machine was proposed
at Brescia, by the Jesuit Lana, who seems to have had no knowledge of
the preceding ones; at least he makes no mention of them. The case
with Lana was perhaps the same as with many ingenious men, who possess
great powers of invention. As they never read, but only think, they
are unacquainted with what others have done before them, and therefore
consider every idea which comes into their mind as new. He proposed a
harrow, the spikes of which should make holes in the earth, in the same
manner as gardeners do with their bean-planter, and the grains of corn
were to fall into these holes from a box pierced like a sieve, and
placed over the harrow[557].
I do not know whether this, at present, could be called a
sowing-machine; but it is not improbable that an apparatus of this kind
would facilitate the planting, or, as it is termed, setting of wheat,
which in modern times has been revived in England, and particularly
in Suffolk. For this purpose holes are made three inches apart, in
rows four inches distant from each other, with a bean-planter, by men
and women. Each labourer is followed by three children, who throw
two or three grains of seed into each hole. One labourer in a second
can make four holes, and in two or three days plant an acre. For
this he obtained nine shillings, one-half of which was given to the
children[558]. By these means there is a saving of one-half the seed;
and this defrays the expenses. The wheat also, when it grows up, is
cleaner as well as more beautiful; and this method, besides, affords
employment to a great number of persons.
However minute and ridiculous this method of planting may appear to
our practical farmers, it is nevertheless true that it has been found
beneficial in Upper Lusatia[559].
The objection that corn when planted in this manner may throw out too
many stems, which will not all ripen at the same time, can be true only
when the grains are placed at too great a distance from each other. The
German mode of farming however is still too remote from horticulture to
admit of our attaching great value to the advantages with which this
method is attended.
I shall here remark, that Sir Francis Bacon says that in his time, that
is, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, attempts had been
made to plant wheat, but being too laborious it was again abandoned,
though he declares it to be undoubtedly advantageous[560]. In the most
populous districts of China almost all the corn is set, or it is first
sown in forcing-beds, and then transplanted. The English call the
labour with the sowing-machine _drilling_, and the planting of wheat
they name _dibbling_.
[Several sowing-machines have been invented, and patents taken out
for them in late years. As it is very difficult to give a description
of them, and still more so for the reader to comprehend them without
figures, we refer to the Penny Cyclopædia, art. “Sowing-machine,” for
an account of the more important.]