FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 11 7 



premium among claimants of equal merit, and the $600 

 was shared equally in the award between Marcus Barrett 

 of Auburn and S. Parsons & Son of Northampton. 



In the offer of $1000 premium for the next year, the 

 appeal was distinctly to the manufacturers, it being 

 for u the best mowing machine that shall be made and 

 used in the summer of 1856 " - that is, the trial was to be 

 with newty made machines, and to continue during the 

 haying season, thus securing the latest improvements and 

 an adequate test. A committee of three practical farm- 

 ers, not members of the society, was appointed to super- 

 vise the competition, and make the award. They added 

 one more condition, that each competitor should mow five 

 acres in the presence of the committee on a day fixed by 

 them, and in a field chosen by the exhibitor. Ten ma- 

 chines were entered, and after trial, five were set aside, as 

 being so far inferior that they could not be taken into 

 consideration, and one, as not being adapted to the varied 

 surface of this State. The remaining four were assigned 

 to work in succession on small lots of grass, of equal di- 

 mensions, in the same field, each machine being drawn by 

 the same pair of horses and managed by the same driver, 

 who was not interested in any machine. A like trial was 

 had on meadow-bottom, which had never been ploughed, 

 where various natural grasses, coarse and fine, were in- 

 termixed. The award of $ 1000 was to D. C. Henderson of 

 Sandusky, Ohio. The report of the committee abounds 

 in details, but no statistics of breakage are given, whence, 

 perhaps, it may be inferred that the havoc witnessed in 

 the preceding year had duly admonished the manufactur- 

 ing experts, leading them to adopt, mentally, a standard 

 for design and workmanship approaching to that pre- 

 sented by Dr. Holmes in his poem entitled the "One Hoss 

 Shay." This retrospect will supply the historically 

 minded reader, with two dates that when, what to modern 

 generations has been known as the scythe, first came into 

 use, being the product of a Massachusetts inventor ; and 



