AMERICAN INSTITUTE, 545 



stock better than it can be wintered on hay alone, giving us our 

 manure in season for top-dressing for meadows, and wlieat the 

 next summer. The manure thus applied being worth much 

 more and handled at less cost than when managed in any other 

 way known to us. 



One point more and I have done. Many persons think that 

 machines thresh cleaner than flails. I have had a great deal to 

 do with machines; but I never saw one at my barns, or my 

 neighbors', that did not leave grain enough in the straw to make 

 the stacks green with sprouted grain as soon as the rain wet 

 them, if the weather was warm. Five hundred bushels of wheat, 

 and sometimes six hundred, threshed in a day; and this last 

 named quantity has been threshed on my farm, results in carry- 

 ing to the stack more grain than a good thresher with a flail will 

 leave in the straw. But why thresh five or six hundred bushels 

 in a day 1 Because well filled clean wheat yields that amount 

 from a machine driven by ten horses for twelve hours. The 

 grain carried to the stack is lost. Whatever the flail leaves the 

 stock eat, as the straw, bright and fresh, is carried out to them 

 during every hour of the day. A good thresher will leave but 

 little, and that little the sheep know how to find. And oats and 

 barley are, when thus fed to stock, worth their usual market 

 price, and wheat more than half the usual market price. 



Respectfully yours, 



GEO. GEDDES. 



P. S. I send you herewith a small sample of clover hay, 

 cured as I attempted to describe to the Club. g. g. 



Several gentlemen expressed themselves favorable to the use 

 of small machines for threshing, driven by one horse power, and 

 managed by two or three men. 



Dr. Smith said that although it might appear singular for an 

 Englishman to talk to American farmers about threshing, yet he 

 had some experience, and spoke in favor of small one, or two 

 horse power machines, as having proved very successful even 

 where labor is so cheap as it is there. 



Solon Robinson — I have no doubt of the advantage of thresh- 

 ing by machinery, but there is one advantage in threshing by 



[Am. Inst.] 35 



