JNJo. 200.| 75 



weights are properly adjusted, any strain exceeding the strength of 

 the parts, which would break a wheel fitted in the ordinary manner, 

 and cause loss, and probably personal injury to sonic one, will be here 

 evaded by the pinions and grooves slipping over each other. If a 

 stone or other substance gets in a groove, the pinions will in a great 

 majority of cases, overleap it by the vibratory lever allowing the pi- 

 nion to rise without injury, and the most violent efforts of a restive or 

 unmanageable horse can hardly derange the connection of the parts. 



Your committee concur in the belief that Mr. Scripture is entitled 

 to great credit for having brought forward a cheap, safe, effective and 

 permanent horse power, which appears to them deserving of encou- 

 ragement from any one requiring such a machine. 

 KespectfuUy submitted. 



(Signed) WM. SERRI':LL, 



JOHN H. RHODES, 

 H. MEIGS. 



REPORT 



On Messrs. Billings and Harrison^s Hemp and Flax-dressing Ma- 

 chinery and process J or rotting the same. 



Your committee take pleasure in stating that they have examined 

 the process and machinery above named, and that in all its details they 

 find the process for rotting superior, and more certain in its results 

 than any plan previously known to them. The rotting pools have 

 peculiar advantages, irom the case with which the rapidity and regu- 

 larity of the process can be controlled ; and the after drying and eva- 

 poration of the aqueous matter, and retention of the feculent, without 

 decomposition, as described by them, is theoretically correct and con- 

 sequently practically useful. This method of rotting and drying will 

 probably render American hemp fully equal lo Russian, and the flax 

 of our country as good as the Flemish or French. 



The machinery for breaking has been only seen by the committee 

 in operation upon flax, and when combined, as seen by them with the 

 skutching process, the flax is ready for market, fully as well cleaned 

 from shives, and freer from tow, than by the ordinary hand process 

 of breaking and swingling ; at the same lime the strength of ihc fibre 

 is not in any way impaired. The skutching process as modified by 



