324 AMERICAN REAPERS IN FRANCE. 



not only been extensively and successfully used, from 

 that time to this, through the Western States, but which 

 has furnished the basis for the most successful models 

 in this country, among the most noted of which are 

 those of McCormick, of Virginia, Ketchum, of New 

 York, and Manny and Atkins, of Illinois. 



The American reaping machines, some of which have 

 been extensively used for the last twenty years, have a 

 world-wide reputation, and a generally-acknowledged 

 superiority, and the credit of having made the prin- 

 ciple which the English and Scotch had invented prac- 

 tically useful undoubtedly belongs to our ingenious 

 mechanics. 



It is not my province to specify which of the machines 

 lately patented is, on the whole, the best, or to point 

 out the parts in which each excels the others. Every 

 farmer has the means, in the reports of the various com- 

 mittees appointed to determine the relative merits of 

 the machines now in use, of forming a tolerably correct 

 conclusion in regard to these matters. The trial made 

 under the direction of the Industrial Exhibition at Paris 

 is still fresh in the minds of many. 



This took place on a field of oats, about forty miles 

 from the city, each machine having about one acre to 

 cut. Three machines were entered for the first trial, 

 one American, one English, and a third from Algiers, 

 all at the same time raking as well as cutting. The 

 American machine did its work in twenty-two minutes, 

 the English in sixty-six, the Algerian in seventy-two. 

 At a subsequent trial on the same piece, when three 

 other patents were entered, of American, English, and 

 French manufacture, respectively, the American machine 

 cut its acre in twenty-two minutes, while the two others 

 failed. The successful competitor on this occasion "did 

 its work in the most exquisite manner," says a French 



