322 THE SICKLE. — THE REAPER. 



them properly and in time. It is not too much to say 

 that the successful introduction of the reaper into our 

 grain-fields has added many millions of dollars to the 

 value of our annual harvest, not only by enabling us to 

 secure the whole product of all that was before planted, 

 but also by making it possible for the farmer to increase 

 the area of his cultivated fields, with a certainty of 

 being able to gather in his whole crop. 



The sickle is undoubtedly as old as the days of Tubal 

 Cain, and was almost universally used till within the 

 memory of men still living. No one, who has had a 

 practical experience of its use, can fail to appreciate 

 the immense saving of slow and wearisome hand 

 labor by the use of the reaper. 



The reaper is no new thing in point of fact. It 

 would, indeed, have been an astonishing evidence of 

 stupidity on the part of the ancients, who relied mainly 

 upon wheat and the other small grains, had they not, at 

 least, tried to replace the sickle by something better. 

 This they did. They were accustomed to use a simple 

 reaper in Prance, a few j'ears after Christ ; for Pliny 

 asserts that the inhabitants of that country fixed a 

 series of knives into the tail-end of a cart, and this, 

 being propelled through the grain, clipped off the ears 

 or heads, and thus it was harvested. 



In England the importance of adopting some method 

 to shorten the labor of harvesting grain was early seen, 

 and efforts were made to accomplish this end at the 

 close of the last, and the beginning of this century. 

 The first patent granted for a reaping machine was that 

 to Boyce, of London, in 1799. Then followed the 

 patent of Meares in 1800, that of Plucknett in 1805, 

 and that of Cumming in 1811, clearly foreshadowing 

 some of the useful improvements of subsequent patents. 

 Smith, of Deanston, Scotland, invented a machine in 



