THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



A NEW REAPING MACHINE 



Like many other valuable iavealions, the reaping- 

 raachiae was at first anaounced to an age that did not 

 want it ; and when at last tlie inadequacy of the old 

 methods to meet modern requirements created a demand, 

 it was revived as a novel wonder both in Great Britain 

 and in the go-ahead country at the other end of the 

 Atlantic " cable." It is not generally known that, as 

 long ago as the year 1780, the Society of Arts proposed 

 the gold medal, or ^'30, as a premium for "a machine 

 to answer the purpose of mowing or reaping wheat, rye, 

 barley, oats, or beans, by which it might be done more 

 expeditiously, and cheaper than by any methods then 

 practised, provided that it did not shed the corn or 

 pulse more than the methods in common practice, and 

 that it lay the straw in such manner as might be easily 

 gathered up for binding." Here was an admirable con- 

 ception of the work required to be done, but too much 

 for inventors to attempt all at once. So that, as 

 Pliny and Palladius had described the Roman reaping- 

 machine, pushed by an ox, and combing off the ears by 

 means of teeth oa the front, Mr. Pitt, of Pendeford, de- 

 signed an improvement upon it in the year 1786, namely, 

 a " rippling " cylinder with iron teeth, driven by the 

 carriage wheel. In 1793 a reaping-machine was con- 

 trived in Lincolnshire; and in November of that year, 

 Mr. John Cartwright, of Brothertoft, near Boston, pub- 

 lished the fact of his having invented a reaper "acting 

 upon a different principle to one previously constructed 

 by himself." In the same year Mr. Edmund Cart- 

 wright, of Doncaster, advertised his "machinery for 

 reaping or mowing corn, grass, S^c, which, by means 

 of one horse and a driver, will cut down six or eight 

 acres of standing corn in a day. It is his intention as 

 soon as one hundred machines are engaged for, to esta- 

 blish a manufactory of them ; the price of each machine 

 will be twenty guineas." The purchasers might return 

 the machines if the invention failed to obtain the " pre- 

 vious seal of approbation " of the Board of Agriculture. 

 These antiquarian items of harvesting mechanics are in- 

 teresting when we bear in mind their very early date — 

 long before Boyce's patent for revolving scythes (not 

 exactly like those with which Boadicea performed the 

 anti-Ccesarian operation of slashing down Roman in- 

 vaders) — before the improvements of Plucknet and 

 Gladstone; long before Salmon's clipping shears, or 

 Smith of Dean&ton's rotary cutting-disc and delivery- 

 drum. 



The Rev. Mr. Bell, in Scotland, produced a suc- 

 cessful machine many years ago ; but it was the impor- 

 tation of M'Cormick's and Hussey's American reapers 

 in 1851 that set numerous English manufacturers about 

 improving aud modifying, and effecting the introduction 

 of the mower or redj)er into our heavy-cropped corn 

 fields. 



Crosskill, Dray, Burgess and Key, and other makers 

 have, by great eflfort and expense in practical testing. 



given us machines that can cope with most of the diffi- 

 culties hitherto presented; but still the ingenuity and 

 fertility of invention of our American brother- Saxons is 

 the source from which new arrivals of improvement are 

 continually forthcoming : so that a common piece of 

 gossip now-a-days is about Messrs. So-and-so's new 

 Yankee grass-mower or corn-reaper. While indebted 

 to them for our cutters, we have made quicker progress 

 in the delivering apparatus — Crosskill's endless bands 

 and Burgess and Key's screws laying the corn in a 

 beautifully regular swathe. Whether we have very 

 heavy and straw-broken, or only light crops to harvest, 

 we wish to have a self-acting delivery if possible ; and 

 further, it is deemed a great advantage to lay the corn at 

 one side, out of the next course of the machine. But 

 having saved the manual labour necessary to rake off, 

 why not deliver in bunches instead of in a continuous 

 swathe, and thus save the labour of "gathering"? 

 Dray's machine, with the tipping platform, does this 

 admirably, only the bunches are not out of the next 

 track of the machine. Palmer's Union reaper, with a 

 curved platform, enables the rake-man to deliver the 

 bunches sideways ; the American Eagle and Manning's 

 machines also permit a similar laying of the cut corn 

 in sheaf-bundles behind the horses : but when the 

 crop is bulky, the incessant working of the rake is 

 very severe labour. Cuthbert's improved Hussey, 

 exhibited at Northallerton, while cutting with a very 

 small expenditure of power (and so simply constructed 

 as to cost very little money), efiects the side-delivery in 

 bunches by means of two rake-men, one pushing the 

 corn back upon the platform, the other drawing it ofT 

 sideways — the two motions (instead of one curved move- 

 ment) enabling the corn to be deposited in perfectly 

 regular, neat, and square-laid bunches. Cannot the 

 machine itself be made to perform this strictly- 

 mechanical process, leaving the judgment and watch- 

 fulness of the driver to regulate and adjust the cutting 

 and delivery to the condition and posture of the crop, 

 the nature of the ground, and other circumstances ? 

 Now we cannot go into the history of all the contri- 

 vances for this desirable purpose ; but Mr. Atkins 

 evidently thought there was nothing insuperably difficult 

 in the problem when he contrived his wonderfully 

 ingenious "automaton rake." This, our readers will 

 remember, was manufactured and shown by Messrs. 

 Ransome and Sims at Lincoln in 1854. However, com- 

 plicated, expensive mechanism, requiring much power 

 to actuate it, is not adapted for rapid travelling and 

 working in the field ; and other American inventors 

 have therefore attempted the simpler movement of a 

 rake sweeping radially over a quadrant-shaped platform. 

 The Eagle machine has a rake of this kind, worked by 

 pinions, circular racks, and springs ; but we have never 

 seen it tried, and, from the machine being exhibited 

 with the manual delivery, suppose that it does not 



