A rare (only other copy recorded, in the British Library) brochure describing in detail one of the very earliest steam ploughs in Britain. The brochure has full-page woodcut of the machine in question. The identity of the machine's inventor is open to question. Woodcroft's "Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Invention, 1617-1852", identifies the inventor as George Heathcoat who was granted patent no. 6267 on 15th May 1832 for "draining and cultivating land; machinery and apparatus applicable thereto". The author, Ambrose Blacklock (1816-1873), was a Dumfries surgeon and inventor, best known for his "Treatise on sheep" (1838). In the 1830s he appears to have been conducting experiments in photographic processes. He was presumably a relation of the Dumfries-born Canadian farmer and politician of the same name. He emigrated to India and worked in Madras Medical College, first as Professor of Surgery and then as Professor of Medicine for sixteen years. At the time of his death he was Deputy Inspector-General of the Indian Medical Department. He died of enteritis in Chittoor and was buried in Madras.