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chanical lines not to adopt any such crazy plan of a cutting apparatus 

 as that of Hussey's. E. N. Dickerson, who was McCormick's counsel 

 in the McCormick-Manny case, in referring to the Hussey cutting ap- 

 paratus which had been described by George Harding, of Manny's 

 counsel, and frequently Hussey's attorney, characterized the Hussey 

 cutting apparatus as follows: 



" My friend (Harding) informs us that the cutting apparatus of 

 Hussey's machine is similar to two bricks and a dull ax, by the use 

 of which you may certainly cut a stick in two if you lay it across be- 

 tween the bricks and strike it with the ax. If you have power enough 

 the stick must yield, but that is a most stupid way of cutting grain, and 

 McCormick was never guilty of anything half so stupid." 



Again referring to the drawing (Fig. 5) of Hussey's cutting ap- 

 paratus, notice that the angle between the knife and the guard is a very 

 acute one eighteen degrees- The bevel on both sides of the knife and 

 the length of the knife, over four inches with its slight angle, makes the 

 description of Dickerson, of " two bricks and a dull ax," very appro- 

 priate. In the cut of the Hussey machine taken from Ardrey's 

 "American Agricultural Implements" (Fig. 2), there are four horses 

 hitched to the machine and they are in a brisk trot. The only work 

 this machine did was to drive the k nife, so it is evident that some- 

 thing must have been the matter w ith his cutting apparatus. 



Hussey gave his entire time for nearly thirty years trying to in- 

 troduce his reaping machine, and of course found some favorable con- 

 ditions in which it operated; still all accounts of the machine have ex- 

 pressions that show its extreme draft, and the fact that it could be 

 operated only when the grain was dry and free from grass and weeds. 



In William C. Dwight's account of the machine published in the 

 Genesee Farmer, in Vol. IV, of 1834, he says: 



" A change of horses is necessary, as the gait of the horses is too 

 rapid to admit of a heavy draft. The horses go at the rate of four or 

 five miles an hour, and when the growth of straw is not too heavy, 

 a fair trot of the team it not too much." 



In the report of the Board of T rustees of the Maryland Agricul- 

 tural Society for 1836, they say that three mules were used upon the 

 machine and that "they moved with equal facility in a walk or in a 

 trot." 



In the report of the Committee of the Philadelphia Agricultural 



