316 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



them in the fall two inches deep, or keep them in sand during 

 Winter, and plant them in the Spring one inch deep. They will 

 grow as readily as Indian corn. After they have come up keep 

 down the weeds and keep the ground clear." 



Adjourned. 



January 8, 1867. 

 Mr. Nathan C. Ely in the chair. Mr. John "VY. Chambers, Sec'y* 



Early Futile Attempts to Reap by Machinery. 



i\Ir. S. Edwards Todd, — Most people take it for granted that 

 reapers and mowers are of quite modern invention. But such a 

 conclusion is far from being correct. Others have supposed that 

 some American Yankee first conceived the idea of constructing a 

 machine for cutting grain with horses and oxen. But history 

 informs us that reapers were in most successful operation before 

 Christopher Columbus first discovered the Western Continent; 

 and that the sickle and the scythe, in some of the Oriental coun- 

 tries, had been superseded by reapers that were worked by one 

 or two oxen, in the early part of the Christian era. 



The first account of a machine to reap grain appears to be that 

 given by Pliny the elder, who was born, it has been supjjosed, 

 about the year of our Lord 23 — more than 1,800 years ago. This 

 historian says: " There are various methods of reaping grain. In 

 the extensive fields of the low lands of Gaul, vans of a large size, 

 with projecting teeth on the forward edge, are driven on two 

 ■wheels through the standing corn, (oats and barley are called 

 corn) by an ox, yoked in a reverse position, with the machine for- 

 ward of the ox. In this manner the ears (or what we call the 

 heads of barley or panicles of oats) are torn ofi and fall into the 

 van. In some places the stalks are severed in the middle by 

 sickles, and the ears or heads" of grain are stripped off between 

 two hatchels." 



Palladius, an eastern ecclesiastical writer, gives the following 

 account of reapers. He says: "In the Gallic lowlands, they 

 employ a more expeditious method of reaping, requiring the assis- 

 tance of a single ox during the whole of harvest time. A cart is 

 constructed which moves on two wheels. A low box of boards is 

 constructed on the wheels, and the boards in front are lower than 

 the rest. Behind this cart, two shafts or thills, are fastened like 

 the poles of a sedan chair. To these an ox is yoked and harnessed 



