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.* 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,

* The title is, Beschreibung eines neuen Instruments mit welchem das Getraide zugleich geackert und gesäet werden kan; vormals erfunden von Locatelli, Landmann im Erz-Herzogthum Cärndten. Nunmehro aber bey diesen Schweren Zeiten - - - - mitgetheilt und zum dritten mal gedruckt. Anno 1603. Without the name of any place, printer, or publisher,

r

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 Munchausen, 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. 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

* Historia litteraria der Teutschen, iii. 2. p. 514.

↑ Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 400. Haller says that this Locatelli was the author also of a medical work entitled: Teatro d'arcani medici. Venez. 1667-8. But Haller certainly here confounds this Locatelli with Louis Locatelli, who according to Iöcher, wrote Theatrum Arcanorum Chymicorum, and died in 1657.

Phil. Transactions vol. v. No. 60. p. 1056.

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 beforementioned German tract; also in the Philosophical Transactions, and thence copied into Duhamel's Traité de la culture des Terres.*

* Paris 1753. 12mo. i. p. 368. tab. 6. Duhamel has committed a double error. He speaks of the invention as if the first experiments were made in Spain, and as if those in Austria had been later. He says also, that the latter were made dans le Luxenbourg in Istria. The English account also says erroneously Luxembourg, instead of Lachsenburg, or Laxemburg, which is in Austria, and not in Istria, A figure, on a reduced scale, but inverted, may be found also in Leske Abhandlungen zur Naturgesch. Physik und Oekonomie aus den Philosoph. Transact. Leipzig 1779. 4to. i. tab. 8. The description, however, is wanting. It was to have followed in the next part, but it was never printed.

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 calls the year 1605, and says that this Segni, who is not noticed by Iöcher, was a canonicus regularis.* 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. From this it appears

• Of Segui an account may be found in Notizie degli scrittori Bolognesi raccolte da Giovanni Fantuzzi. In Bologna 1784—1794. ix. vol. 4to. vii. p. 377. Segni, who died in 1610, wrote a great many ascetic books, the names of which are there given. The work to which I allude was twice printed, and is entitled, Trattato sopra la carestia e fame, sue cause, accidenti, provisioni e reggimenti, varie, moltiplicazioni e sorte di pane; discorsi filosofici, theologici, &c. Ferrara, per Benedetto Mamarelli 1591, and accresciuto dal autore in Bologna per Gio. Rossi, 1602. The size is not given. Haller calls it a quarto.

+ Dell'agricoltura, dell' arti, e del commercio, Lettere di Antonio Zanon. In Venezia 1764, 8vo. vol. iii. p. 325. The passage, as quoted by Segni, is as follows: Riesce maravigliosamente utile per lo piano lo stromento ritrovato già molt' anni da M. Giovanni Cavallina da Bologna, col quale piuttosto vien piantato il fromento, che seminato, e sparagna in buondato il grano in seminare. Questo è fatto come un forloncino da burattare la farina, sopra un carrivolo semplice di due ruote ed un timone: parte della cassa tiene il grano,

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 sowingmachine was proposed at Brescia, by the Jesuit

che si ha da seminare, parte è accommodata sotto il buratto, sbusata, ed per ogni buco ha una canna di ferro verso la terra, che finisce però in taglio di coltello dalla parte dinanzi, tanto longo, quanto basta a fare un solco nel quale subito cade per la canna il grano burattato, e si seppellisce tutto, che non ne và niente a male, e con un altro ferro in ultimo lo cuopre immediatemente, tirandovi sopra quel terreno, che si cavò, facendo il solco detto; si che non può esserne mangiato un sol grano dagli uccelli, o da altri animali, come sogliano fare, mentre li contadini seminano all' modo usato; lascia poi certi spatii ed intervalli, per li quali vanno al suo tempo li mietitori senza calpestare il fromento, il che suol essere di non poco danno. La raccolta è piu sicura, senza comparatione, poichè a questo modo nasce tutto il grano seminato, si radica meglio, e si nodrisce dell' altro. Vero è che la terra vuol essere mossa una volta più del solito, ma questa fatica vien ricompensata dall' agevolezza nel seminarla, bastando ogni vil giumento o garzoncello a tirare detto stromento, dal cui moto si muovono insieme il furlone e il buratto a lavorare.