HARVESTING 



81 



quently discussed endeavor, not only to extend and improve the 

 mechanism of the machine so that it will perform perfectly each 

 and every operation connected with harvesting, but also to 

 apply a power that will operate the machine. Under headers 

 are included all machines that are designed to gather only the 

 heads of the wheat, leaving the straw in the field. Such ma- 

 chines are of two kinds; stripping and cutting headers. The 

 former has the distinction of being the first grain gathering 



THE GALLIC HEADER, DESCRIBED BY PLINY A. D. 70 



machine mentioned in history. It was used by the farmers of 

 Gaul 'as early as the time of Christ. Pliny described it. A 

 series of lance-shaped knives was fastened into one end of a 

 large-bodied, two-wheeled cart. An animal yoked behind the 

 cart pushed it through the grain. After the heads of the wheat 

 were stripped from, the stalks by the knives or teeth, they were 

 raked into the box-like frame by an attendant. Palladius gives 

 a similar account of the machine in the fourth century. 



After being used during hundreds of years, the Gallic header 

 disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten 

 for several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the 

 fate of permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the 

 modern world. The published descriptions of the machine by 

 Pliny and Palladius furnished the impulse in which modern 

 harvesting inventions originated. Its distinctive features are 

 retained in several modern inventions of this class, machines 



