108 Ten Years of East Lutliian Farming. 



though not always so perfect, as those which surprise the spec- 

 tator from their ingenuity, and ahnost perplex him by their 

 numbers, at the Royal Agricultural Shows, 



The fixed steam threshing-mill is a marked, and all but uni- 

 versal feature in every farm — the ubiquitous chimney-stalk being 

 to the " toon " what the church-spire is to the country village ; 

 but in addition to these we have to some extent borrowed from 

 England the locomotive threshing-mill, several of which now 

 ply for hire, and are often found convenient. 



In several important respects the furnishings of Scottish home- 

 steads are much inferior to those of the best specimens of 

 English farms. Apparatus for steaming food, light and useful 

 locomotive-engines driving pulpers or chaff-cutters, mills lor 

 grinding corn, (5cc., are all much more common in England than 

 in Scotland, where cattle and sheep are still for the most part led 

 on roots and straw given separately, frequently without the 

 addition of corn and cake ; moreover, great establishments lor 

 the manufacture of agricultural implements like those of the 

 Croskills, Ransomes, and Howards, have no counterparts beyond 

 the Tweed. Nevertheless, one very important implement is, we 

 imagine, much more universally in use in the Lothians than 

 in England, since, practically speaking, the whole corn-crop 

 and even a portion of the bean-crop is now cut by the reaping- 

 machine. The paper of 1853 marks the turning-point in the 

 history of this great invention, which, after long neglect, has at 

 length become indispensable in our harvest-field. 



"The crops in East Lothian," says the writer of the former 

 account, " are cut principally by the sickle, occasional fields 

 only being cut by the scythe. Last season a considerable number 

 of Bell's reapers were in use, but comparatively little was cut by 

 them." 



It is with something like regret that we have to record that 

 Bell's machine — the parent of all really useful reapers — is 

 now almost a thing of the past, and its posterity bear very 

 little resemblance to their progenitor. One gentleman farmer, 

 indeed, clings to " Bell " with true British tenacity, and with half- 

 a-dozen of these implements reaps the crop of four large farms, 

 containing fields which in some counties would be called moun- 

 tainous. The large machines of Burgess and Key, acting on the 

 screw principle, next occupied the farmer's attention ; but these 

 in their turn have been superseded, and, with Croskill's "Bell," 

 they now rot in corners, looking, in comparison to modern reapers, 

 like skeletons of the Mammoth and the Mastodon among recent 

 animals. 



During the harvest of 1860, a competition of reapers was held 

 in East Lothian, under the auspices of the local Agricultural 



