PEACTICAL TRIALS. 311 



or gone to seed, as the owner prefers. The horses that 

 we have used from the first weigh from ten to eleven 

 hundred each. We believe horses of the above weight 

 the best adapted to all farm work, and, of course, best 

 for mowing, carting, and ploughing. Were the team for 

 mowing and nothing else, we should have no objection 

 to their weighing more than the above, provided they 

 were smart and active ; but a slow, logy team is not the 

 thing ; for it needs prompt action to start ofif in good 

 shape and to work well. 



" We consider the draught not heavier than that of 

 the common plough. Were it used at the same time of 

 the year, our opinion is that the team would chafe and 

 sweat quite as much. A man on his own farm would 

 have no occasion to work his team so as to injure it iu 

 the least, for the reason that he could mow more in the 

 first half of the day than he could secure in the afternoon 

 of the same or the next day, with the same team. We have 

 done our mowing, the past season, with one and the same 

 pair of horses, working them from three to seven hours 

 per day. The usual practice is to mow in the morning 

 two or three hours or more, as the case may be, and use 

 the same team in the afternoon to draw the hay to the 

 barn, which is from one to two miles distant. The speed 

 required to work a machine to advantage is about the 

 same as that for a plough on stubble-land, or from two 

 and one-half to three miles per hour. There is no objec- 

 tion to quicker speed, however, in making good work." 



In a case within my knowledge, a m'achine with a 

 cutter-bar five feet in length, and with horses weighing 

 in harness 1,968 pounds, driven at a moderate speed, 

 only equal to 2Q rods a minute, or 3| miles an hour, a 

 half-acre, 20 rods by 4, with a burden of 2,400 pounds 

 of hay to the acre, was cut in fourteen swaths, an 

 average of 4,^^^ feet, in eighteen minutes, including the 



