No. 112.1 619 



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that this phenomenon in machinery is capable t)f cuttingj thrash- 

 ing, cleaning and sacking three acres of wheat in one hour. Their 

 first machine was made in 1834. 



At the late trial at Geneva, near a dozen different reapers were 

 entered, and for all of them it was claimed that they were eciually 

 well adapted to mowing. Ketchum, of Buffalo, alone entered what 

 purported to be only a raowei. From Illinois, McCormick, Manny, 

 Euggs, and WrigY.t, each brought a machine, and so did Seymoift 

 and Morgan of Brockport.Densmore. also of Brockport,andBurrall 

 of Geneva, all of our own State. One of the Brockport machines, 

 and that of Wright of Chicago, each had an arrangement of its ma- 

 machinery for depositinggrain in gavils, suitable for binding, all the 

 others requiring that work to be done by a hand on the machine. 

 The self-raking apparatus is yet imperfect, and is doomed always 

 to encounter a very obvious difficultv. The raachinerv throws off* 

 the cut grain at regular and equal distances, as the reaper advan- 

 ces; but it is obvious that the gavilsthus deposited must vary in 

 size, just in proportion as the grain stands thick on the ground. The 

 machine may be made to do its work with entire accuracy as to dis- 

 tance between bundles, but it must forever lack the judgmen t need- 

 ed to make those bundles of a size. Man may make machines accu- 

 rate, and exact in their performance, but it is beyond his power 

 to endow them with discretion. But this matter, difficult as it 

 seems, may be confidently left to the inventive ingenuity of our 

 countrymen. 



On the comparatively level lands of the great wheat-growing 

 west, reaping machines are in general use, and are deemed indis- 

 pensable wlien tlie breadth of wheat sown is so largely dis]>ropor- 

 tioned to the nuniljer of laborers. Machines which deliver the 

 cut grain at the side, may be employed to cut a whole crop at the 

 rate of 15 or 20 acres a day, before binding any uT it — obviously 

 a great advantage when labor is scarce. Many of the reapers de- 

 livered the grain, wIk'U cut, imnieiliately in rear of their track, 

 and directly in line of the team track on the nexf naiiul. The ad- 

 vantages in this case are not so obvious. But that the reaper is a 

 labor-saving machine of immense power and value, wlien the face 

 of the country favors its operations, is fairly and conclusively 

 proved by trials without number, not only in tlie far west, but in 



