FARyi IMPLEMEXTS. 109 



draught in all was heavy, and some of the best had a side 

 draught sufficient to be destructive to the team. 



In June of the same year, 1852, twelve reaping machines and 

 several mowers, competed at the trial held by the Ohio State 

 Board of Agriculture, among them McCormick's, patented first 

 in 1834, and Hussey's, first patented in 1833 ; but according to 

 the report of the judges, there appears to have been no very 

 striking superiority in the merits of the different machines. 



The importance of these early efforts to overcome the obsta- 

 cles to the successful operation of new machinery, will be 

 sufficiently clear when we consider that more than twenty 

 million tons of hay are annually raised and cured in this coun- 

 try, and that the grass and hay crop is the true basis of our 

 agriculture, since, without it, in a northern climate, we can have 

 no cattle; without cattle, no manure; without manure, no crops. 

 "With the necessity we have for stall feeding, from three to five 

 or six months of the year, for means of which we are dependent 

 mainly upon hay, it is apparent that, in an economical point of 

 view, this crop ia one of the most important that can occupy 

 the farmer's attention. 



From this time the inventive genius of the country was 

 stimulated to an extraordinary degree of activity. Patents 

 began to multiply, and the rapid growth of this important 

 branch of manufactures may be dated about the year 1855. 



Local trials, to test the merits of the various machines, were 

 held in different parts of the country nearly every year ; but five 

 years after the meeting at Geneva, a general desire was mani- 

 fested to have another on a scale that should bring together all 

 the prominent reapers and mowers in the country ; and, accord- 

 ingly, the United States Agricultural Society held a national 

 trial at Syracuse, N'ew York, in 1857. Here more than forty 

 entries of mowers and reapers were made, and they were 



