at the Salisbimj Meeting, 1857. 423 



The Mowing-machine trials took place at some distance from 

 the other implements, in " a small meadow of coarse rank herbage, 

 intersected by open drains, and ill adapted for anything but a 

 severe trial of tlie tempers of the exhibiters," to use the words of 

 my fellow steward. Sir Archibald Macdonald, who superintended 

 their trial. After noticing Lord Kinnaird's and Mazier's ma-* 

 chines, he proceeds, in the communication I have quoted from, to 

 say of the third competitor, " Clayton's machine was admirably 

 worked by two cheerful Yankees, who made light of every diffi- 

 culty, and most deservedly carried off the 15Z. prize, doing their 

 work beautifully, and stopping at nothing. On the following 

 morning Dray and Co. exhibited their mowing machine, which 

 was thought worthy of a 5/. prize." 



Having been engaged during the time of this trial in the drill 

 and horse-hoe fields, my first sight of this meadow Avas during the 

 severe competition of the Haymakers, most carefully and admir- 

 ably conducted the following day by Messrs. Clarke and Owen. 

 The extreme coarseness and thickness of the grass, cut only the 

 day before, converting the open drains above-mentioned into so 

 many blind-ditches, made it indeed a trial of extraordinary 

 severity; and the herbage being very much thicker by accumula- 

 tion at the lower side of the meadow, afforded some good proofs 

 of the separating power of the most improved specimens of this 

 light and elegant implement, whose passage along a shorn hay- 

 field on a summer day, scattering its light load into the air like 

 a running halo, offers perhaps the most picturesque sight that 

 modern agricultural machinery can boast. The careful and 

 detailed report of the Judges of this and the horse-rake class 

 requires no comment. 



The shade of Euclid himself might have been invoked to the 

 task of dividing into eight tolerably equal portions (correspond- 

 ing with the number of the competing machines) the indescrib- 

 ably-shaped field of scanty rye upon which the Reaping- 

 machines were to rehearse once again the often repeated 

 " experimentum in corpore vili" of xoheat-cwttra^. This pre- 

 liminary work being, however, at last roughly accomplished (in 

 spite of an " angulus iste^^ that would not capitulate to any 

 form of geometrical arrangement), was well repaid by the first 

 conclusive decision of the Judges, without motion for a new 

 trial in August ; a system of adjournment which, if carried out to 

 the full, might with almost equal claim be extended to a large 

 proportion of the implements belonging to the two first groups 

 of the now triennial course, as will be found instanced in the 

 suggestion at the close of the appended Report of Messrs. Clarke 

 and Owen, on the steam ploughs, that their further trial should 

 take place in April or May. 



2 f2 



