THE WHEAT CKOP. 55 



Canada, with a population now exceeding that of Great 

 Britain, such an antiquated tool as a sickle is not to be 

 seen, the whole harvest operations being effected either 

 with the scythe or with a reaping machine. Assuming 

 the details of mowing quoted from the Agricultural 

 Gazette to be equally practicable in other districts as in 

 the one referred to (where, indeed, it had never been seen 

 before), and taking a 10 -acre field as our standard of 

 comparison, we should find that the labour required would 

 be that of ten men and ten children, and the cost not 

 exceeding 2, 10s. 



The reaping machine is unquestionably one of the 

 greatest benefits which the application of Mechanics to 

 farm purposes has conferred on agriculture. Although it 

 has not even yet received, at the hands of our farmers, 

 that general acknowledgment which it deserves, and which, 

 sooner or later, its importance will secure to it, still no 

 one, I think, is inclined to question that a machine which 

 so efficiently represents hand labour in the harvest field 

 is a great boon to the farmer; as in all field operations 

 despatch, in a climate like ours, is a matter of importance, 

 and the last processes of ripening are frequently so rapid 

 that it very rarely happens that a farmer can obtain 

 labour enough to cut all his crops at the precise time he 

 would desire, without, at all events, taking it from other 

 operations, probably of equal importance at that particular 

 time. 



The practical introduction of this machine to British 

 agriculture, at the Exhibition of 1851, read us a lesson 

 which, it is to be hoped, will not be lost upon us. Every one 

 gazed upon the machine with surprise, as if it had sprung 

 into existence then and there, fully developed in its parts, 

 and matured in its action, whereas the historians of Ro- 

 man agriculture 1 describe fully a reaping machine used in 



1 See Pliny, lib. xviii., c. xxx., and Palladius, lib. vii., tit. 2. 



