202 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



July 12, 1859: 



Present, 60 members. Dr. Knight in the chair. 



By H. Meigs — Reaping Machine 2,000 years ago. 



Gaul used something like McCormick's Keaper before the invasion by 

 Julius Ccesar, about 1,900 years ago. A sort of cart body, sides sloping 

 outwards on two wheels propelled by an ox ; the teeth in front cut off 

 the grain heads and fill the cart, while the straw is trodden into the ground 

 as it ought to be to maintain the fertility of it. The cart body was raised 

 or lowered at the pleasure of the driver, to suit the height of the grain. 

 Lasteyrie, in his collection of machines, gives a drawing of it. 



The Romans reaped their wheat about two days before, it. was ripe. A 

 reaper (man) cut an acre of wheat in a day and a half — clover in one day. 

 Columella said a good mower cut an acre of meadow grass, and bound 

 1,200 bundles of hay — about two tons. They cut a second crop. They 

 drained three feet wide and four deep on wet land, laid stones at bottom — 

 some open, some covered — twisted straw and pine leaves and branches on 

 bottom and then earth thrown in. They planted trees for fences, briars 

 and thorns. Eggs were sometimes about $1 each ; pea hens about $7 

 each ; doves per pair, about S7. 



They sometimes had wheat stool 400 stalks to one grain. They sowed 

 five pecks of wheat per acre ; the crop 21 and 32 bashels per acre- In 

 Varr's time, wheat was worth about 40 cents a bushel, and in Columella's 

 time, seventy years after, about $2 a bushel. Land worth 25 years' pur- 

 chase ; interest of money 6 per cent. 



Agriculture fell oiF, and until almost one thousand years had passed the 

 people wore no shirts, could neither read or write ; and it is only within 

 the lifetime of this generation that agriculture has begun to revive. 



In France, the revival is marked in about the year 1550, by an agricul- 

 tural book called " Les Moyens de devenir riehe," the way to become rich, 

 written by an ingenious potter, of the name of Bernard de Pallisy. 



Piedmont feeds cattle with extraordinary care, combed, brushed, twice 

 a day oiled. Clover and grass in summer, hay, elm leaves, and walnut 

 cake in winter. They are very smooth, round and fat. Lodi gives Par- 

 merson cheese from a mixed breed of red Hungarian or Swiss cow and 

 cattle of Lombardy. These cows are fed five hours a day, and all the rest 

 stalled and have hay. The cheese is made of skimmed milk. Lombai'dy 

 has its peculiar poplar growing on the borders of division ditches. 



TOMATO 



Near Pompeii, is grown largely as a field crop — supplies Borne and 

 other places. 



CONDOR. 



This enormous bird, so famed in the vicinity of Cliimborazo and other 

 loftiest of the Andes, dwells also on our California mountains, where he 

 has occasionally been found to measure eleven feet from tip to tip of his 

 wings. 



