SECRETARY'S REPORT. 91 



In the meantime, Scliuebley, of Maryland, invented a machine 

 thirty years ago, on which a patent was granted in 1833, the 

 same year in which Obed Hussey, of Baltimore, obtained a 

 patent on a reaper, which has not only been extensively and 

 successfully used from that time to this, through the Western 

 States, but which has furnished the basis for the most successful 

 models in this country, among the most noted of which are 

 those of McCormick, of Virginia, Ketchum, of New York, 

 and Manny and Atkins of Illinois. 



The American reaping machines, some of which have been 

 extensively used for the last twenty years, have a world-wide 

 reputation, and a generally -acknowledged superiority, and the 

 credit of having made the principle which the English and 

 Scotch had invented, practically useful, undoubtedly belongs to 

 our ingenious mechanics. So steamboats were invented and 

 made long before the time of Fulton ; l)ut to him belongs the 

 credit of making their common use practicable, and no one 

 thinks of refushig to give him the full credit of the invention. 



It is not my province to specify which of the machines lately 

 patented, is, on the whole, the best, or to point out the parts in 

 which each excels the others. Every farmer has the means in 

 the reports of the various committees appointed to determine 

 the relative merits of the machines now in use, of forming a 

 tolerably correct conclusion in regard to these matters. But, 

 during the past season, there has been one trial so interesting to 

 all Americans as to deserve especial mention. I refer to that 

 made under the direction of the Industrial Exhibition at Paris. 



This took place on a field of oats, about forty miles from the 

 city, each machine having about one acre to cut. Three ma- 

 chines were entered for the first trial, one American, one Eng- 

 lish, and a third from Algiers, all at the same time raking as 

 well as cutting. The American machine did its work in 

 twenty-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, the Algerian in 

 seventy-two. At a subsequent trial on the same piece, when 

 three other machines were entered, of American, English and 

 French manufacture, respectively, the American machine cut 

 its acre in twenty-two minutes, while the two others failed. 

 The successful competitor on this occasion, " did its work in 

 the most exquisite manner," says a French journal, " not leav- 

 ing a single stalk ungathered, and it discharged the grain in 



