246 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The Heath Mower took a thousand-dollar premium as the 

 best machine in a competitive trial, arranged by the " Mas- 

 sachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture," and 

 there was never a machine of the same kind made that could 

 do a day's work. 



Although Mr. Bell's machine was the first that really per- 

 formed practical work, — because he hit the only practical 

 device, the shears-cut now used by all mowers and reapers 

 which have been invented and which do efficient work, — many 

 attempts had been made before his to mow or reap by machin- 

 ery. In the first century of the Christian era, Pliny, the histo- 

 rian, writes that in the vast domains of the province of Gaul 

 (now France), the grain was harvested by a machine consist- 

 ing of a large, wide box with sloping sides, carried on two 

 wheels, the front board being lower than the others, and having 

 projecting from its edge a great many small teeth, wide-set, 

 in a row corresponding to the heads of the grain, and turned 

 up at the ends. On the back of the machine, two short 

 shafts are fixed ; in these an ox is yoked, with his head 

 towards the machine. When the machine is pushed through 

 the standing grain, the heads are caught by the teeth and 

 dropped in the box behind, the driver setting the teeth higher 

 or lower as the condition of the standing grain may require. 

 After eighteen hundred years, the same thing is revived as 

 a header for gathering clover seed ; and it is also about the 

 same length of time before any attempt was made to reap 

 by machinery. 



The first patented reaper was invented by Boyce, in Eng- 

 land, in 1790, having six rotating knives swung beneath the 

 frame of the machine. For forty years inventions contin- 

 ued to be made ; but with no positive results, till Hussey, in 

 1833, invented a machine having all the essentials of the 

 true reaper and mower. McCormick was next, and from 

 that time to the present invention has never ceased, and 

 patents almost without number have been granted for every 

 different part which goes to make a complete mowing-ma- 

 chine or reaper. Of these machines, mowers, harvesters, 

 reapers, and reapers and mowers combined, there were 

 made the past year, about 180,000. A notice of reaping- 

 machines would be incomplete without special mention of the 



