REAL PRESENCE 



REAPING 



595 



from all considerations of mere beauty, to say 

 nothing of religion or morality ; and that the 

 experimental romance must hereafter follow the 

 rigid methods of science, in being based alone 

 on ' human documents ' supplied from the close 

 observation of the present, or from laborious erudi- 

 tion the retrospective observation of the past. 

 As a gospel this militant Realism is the offspring 

 of the Positive philosophy and the physiology 

 and psychology of the age ; and in effect, in the 

 hands of its apostles, it has become a new 

 morality which reforms not by precept but ex- 

 ample, not by the attraction of the good, but by 

 the repulsion of the evil. The practical result is 

 that for French realists there is in the moral world 

 only the evil, in the visible world only the ugly, 

 MM the triumphs of our modern fiction are the 

 pitiless impersonality of Madame Dowry, the cold 

 splendours of SalammM, the brutal vulgarities of 

 Zola, the refined sensualism of Bourget and Guy 

 de Maupassant, the pretentious inanities of the 

 Goncourt brothers, and the dreary pessimism of 

 Dostoievsky and Tolstoi. If realism were perfect 

 it would include all reality, order as well as dis- 

 order, the general as well as the particular, the 

 lofty as well as the low. For there are men and 

 women who are neither selfish nor drunken, nor 

 lecherous ; your experimental cess]>ool is not Paris, 

 your Paiis is not the universe ; your hospital-wards 

 may contain cases of all moral maladies, but you 

 forget the moving world of health and life outside 

 its* walls ; your vaunted collection lacks one speci- 

 men, not ttie rarest, and certainly the most beauti- 

 ful. For the dream is as true a leaf of life as the 

 wibiT vision, and idealism is the permanent revenge 

 of man over the inequalities of life the protest of 

 creative mind against external fatality, idealistic 

 art seizes life at its richest moments, and presents 

 it preserved for ever by its immaterial essence from 

 inconstancy and degradation. This so-called real- 

 ism is not reality the steps of true art must ever 

 be elimination and generalisation ; its postulates, 

 the eternal << inventions of form, style, language, 

 ami subject, necessary because they are elemental. 



Real Presence. See LORD'S SUPPER, TRAN- 



SUHSTANTIATION. 



Real-schnlcn. See EDUCATION, Vol. IV. p. 208. 



Reaping, the act of cutting corn, was from 

 time immemorial until far through the 19th 

 century performed with an instrument called a 

 reaping-hook or sickle. The sickles in use among 

 the ancient Jews, Egyptians, and Chinese appear to 

 have differed very little in form from those employed 

 in Great Kritain. The reaping-hook is a curved 

 instrument of about a foot and a half in length, 

 tapering from a breadth of about two inches at the 

 hut-end, where it is fixed into a wooden handle. 

 The edge is sometimes serrated ; but, as a rule, it 

 has long been made plain and sharp like a knife. 

 In many parts of the British Isles it was sup- 

 planted * by the scythe in the earlier half of the 

 19th century. In other parts it lived until tin; 

 ni'iili-rn reaping-machine was ready to take the 

 place of it as well as of the scythe. The sickle or 

 nook did its work admirably, but it was neces- 

 sarily slow. On small farms in some districts it is 

 still employed ; and occasionally on large farms, 

 when the crop is much laid and twisted, it is 

 resorted to. By the scythe com can be cut at a 

 rather less cost per acre than with the hook ; but 

 the work is not always so neatly done. As nice 

 a stul, I. ! will be left by a good hand with the 

 scythe, and often nicer than by the hook, but the 

 sheaves are not, as a rule, so tidy after the scythe, 

 though they will stack rather earlier. Of a fair 

 working crop an adept at the scythe would cut 2 

 or 2 acres per diem. The average, however, would 



not exceed 1J acres. In fact, if the crop is heavy, 

 that extent is a very hard day's work. 



An attempt to trace the history of the reaping- 

 machine would carry us far back into the earlier 

 stages of agriculture. Pliny the Elder, who was 

 born early in the 1st century of the Christian era, 

 found a reaping-machine in Gaul. He says : ' In 

 the extensive fields in the lowlands of Gaul vans 

 of large size, with projecting teeth on the edge, are 

 driven on two wheels through the standing corn 

 by an ox yoked in a reverse position. In this 

 manner the ears are torn oft', and fall into the van." 

 Pulladius, about four centuries later, found a simi- 

 lar appliance for reaping corn in Gaul. He gives 

 a more detailed but similar description of the 



Fig. 1. Ancient Reaping-machine. 



machine. Fig. 1, copied from Mr Woodcraft's 

 Appendix to the Specifications of English Patentt 

 for Reaping-machines, represents what is con- 

 ceived, from the descriptions, to have been the 

 form of this ancient reaper. 



In modern times the idea of a mechanical reaper 

 appears to have originated with Capel Lofl't (q.v. ), 

 who in 1785 suggested a machine something after 

 the pattern of the ancient one descriBed al>ove. 

 Between that time and the Great Exhibition of 

 1851 in London, from which the general use of 

 mechanical reapers may be said to date, the 

 patents taken out for reaping-machines were very 

 numerous. Among the most promising of these 

 may be mentioned those of Mr Gladstone of Castle- 

 Douglas ; Mr Smith of Deanston ; Mr Kerr, Edin- 

 burgh ; Mr Scott of Ormiston ; Mr Dobbs, an actor 

 in Birmingham ; Mr Mann of Raby, near Wigton ; 

 and the Rev. Patrick Bell of Carmylie, Forfar- 

 shire. In 1826 Mr Bell constructed an efficient 

 and simple machine, which long continued in use, 

 and several features of which are observable in 

 the rea|>er8 of the present day. The inventor of 

 this, the first machine of the kind in Scotland, 

 received a public testimonial from agriculturists, 

 in consideration of the services he thus rendered 

 to agriculture. In America Mr Hussey and Mr 

 M'Cormick took out patents for reaping-machines 

 of superior character in 1833 and 1834 respectively. 

 The movements of the cutters of these machines 

 were various. A few were advancing on\y, some 

 sidelong and advancing, others reciprocating and 

 advancing, a large number continuous and advanc- 

 ing, and others continuous and alternate. The 

 reciprocating and advancing motion is that now 

 employed on the machines in use. 



The principal difference in the machines now so 

 largely used for cutting corn is in the form and 

 character of the cutters, and in the mode of deliver- 

 ing the grain after it is cut. 



The cutting-knives are of two kinds one, obtuse- 

 angled and serrated ; the other, acute-angled and 

 for the most part plain. Both are attached to a bar, 

 and are made to work through another bar of iron 

 fitted with hollow fingers, called guard-fingers, 

 which, projecting forwards, catch the standing 

 corn, and retain it firmly until it is cut. The 

 serrated knife saws through it, the plain knife 

 clips it, as it were, the finger-guard forming the 

 fixed blade of the scissors. 



