72 MusTjoii). 



to bring over a sample of an improved form in pieces, and liave it put 

 together for my inspection here. 



This operation only occupied about an hour and a quarter. The 

 moving power and framework of the machine consists of a single pair 

 of wheels (on which the machine rests), with what may be described 

 as two small pairs of shafts, or large handles, one pair pointing 

 forwards, and another backwards, joined in the middle by a frame, 

 across which are fixed two long bars. 



It is difficult to convey an idea of machinery by simple description, 

 but if the reader will imagine a frame made on the general plan of a 

 garden hand carrying barrow, with its handles behind and before, and 

 instead of the carrying boards in the middle, the centre crossed by two 

 light bars about seven feet long, and this frame supported on a pair of 

 wheels ; this will give (excepting in the machine being much larger 

 than the barrow) a general idea of the frame from which the beetle 

 clearing apparatus is suspended. 



This part consists of five flat metal troughs, twelve inches wide, 

 four feet long, and about two inches deep, slung from the cross-bars, 

 so as to hang about six, or rather more, inches from the ground, and 

 of course ranging from back to front (i. e., not cross-wise). When in 

 use, a layer of tar is placed in these troughs. On either side of each 

 trough, and hanging from above, so that the lower edge is rather above 

 it, a piece of canvas, somewhat longer than the trough, and a yard 

 deep, is lightly slung (by a wand run in its upper edge) to the 

 cross-bars. 



The method of action is for the machine, which is very light, to be 

 drawn or pushed along the rows of infested Mustard. One long trough 

 passes between two rows, and the canvas on each side passes along 

 with it outside the two rows, the apparatus being so contrived that the 

 light touch of the canvas does not injure the plants, but very gently 

 bends them a little over the trough below, into which the beetles fall 

 in legions, and are caught by the tar. The machine is made for the 

 suspending horizontal frame to range about four feet from the ground, 

 but it is furnished with upright screw standards, by which it can be 

 raised to allow a crop at ordinary full growth to be cleared. One im- 

 portant part of the arrangement is the sUnging of the apparatus, 

 which is so managed by short chains that no force is used ; the strips 

 of hanging canvas are in constant vibration, thus very lightly shaking 

 the plants, but not iceujhtUui them, as their own light weight is slung 

 from the bars. Each trough, with its shaking-off canvases, takes two 

 rows of Mustard, consequently the machine with five parallel troughs 

 would clear ten rows of Mustard simultaneously, and it will clear from 

 sixteen to twenty acres in the course of the day. 



The main alterations of the machine since the inspection in August, 



