FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 115 



rivable from the working of his machine. Amongf the 

 statistics of the operation of the seventeen machines are 

 these : Fingers broken or lost (which, in this case means 

 fingers of the machines, not the operators'), 93 ; knives 

 broken or lost, 18 ; pins, screws and bolts broken or lost, 

 17 ; and one instance, of each sort, of breaking a track- 

 clearer, a pole, an axle, an iron brace, a crank and a cog- 

 wheel. What amount of wreckage would have been 

 disclosed, had the records of the entire forty machines 

 been sent in, can only be conjectured ; but what is given 

 signifies that the mowing machine, as a practical farming 

 implement, had just begun its career, and that skill was 

 lacking in the makers, and, no doubt, the operators also. 



The invention appears to have been sufficiently per- 

 fected to work on the level, alluvial fields of the West a 

 few years earlier than upon the irregular land surfaces of 

 New England. A practical working machine had long 

 been sought for. Attempts to produce such are recorded 

 in the pages of history, at various dates, from the time of 

 the Roman Empire, forward. In a reference to t^ie subject 

 in one of the publications of the society it is remarked, 

 that the colonial legislature of Massachusetts granted a 

 patent for a mowing machine. In trusting to his memory 

 the writer made an error, but it was a very natural one ; 

 for the patent was granted for a " mowing engine." Al- 

 though the event ante-dates the existence of the society, a 

 mention of it will not be wholly out of place here, since 

 it relates directly to agriculture, and shows that inventive 

 talent, as applicable in that useful art, received encourage- 

 ment, in Massachusetts, almost from the beginning. The 

 case is nearly parallel to that given among the anecdotes 

 of Dr. Franklin. In an exigency when Philadelphia was 

 threatened with invasion, more ordnance was needed. 

 Knowing that the Quakers of that city would not con- 

 tribute, directly, for the procuring of war material, he 

 suggested to them that a fund, already accumulated by 

 them, for the purchase of a fire engine, might be applied 



