on Ar/ricultural Implements. 



611 



implement, but a steady hand and cool head to steer it. This tool 

 will stand well the test of economy, for it will go over ten acres a 

 day easily, wiih two horses (sometimes one), a man, and a boy, at a 

 cost oF, sav 10 shilling's. The work could certainly not be done 

 otherwise for less than two shillings an acre, '20 shiUmgs altogether, 

 even if you could find hands to do it, in harvest-time. This esti- 

 mate accords, I find, with the report of the Judges at the York 

 Meeting, practical farmers, who thus speak of the implement: — 

 " The work done bv it is far superior to any hand-hoeing: it can 

 also be done for less than half the cost : indeed, so highly do we 

 value it, that we think no farmer can farm as he ought without it." 

 The crops, after hoeing, soon cover the ground, and are thus 

 beyond man's interference until time, the ripener, summons him 

 to the operations of harvest. 



III. Harvesting Implements. 



1. Reaping -Machine. 



At the opening of this century it was thought that a suc- 

 cessful reaping-machine had been invented ; and a reward was 

 voted by Parliament to its author. The machine was employed 

 here and abroad, but, fram its intricacy, fell into disuse. Another 

 has been lately devised in one of our colonies, which cuts off the 

 heads of the corn, but leaves the straw standing, a latal defect 

 in an old- settled country, where the growth of corn is forced by 

 the application of dung. Our farmers may well, therefore, have 

 been astonished by an American implement which not only 

 reaped their wheat but performed the work with the neatness and 

 certainty of an old and perfect machine. Its novelty of action 

 reminded one of seeing the first engine run on the Liverpool and 

 Manchester Railway in 1830. Its perfection depended on its being 

 new only in England, but in America the result of repeated disap- 

 pointments and untired perseverance. The United States Patent 

 Commissioner says of jNlr. ]\l'Cormick's reaping-machine : — 



" In agriculture it is, in my view, as important, as a labour-saving 

 device, as the spinnin2:-jenny and power-loom in manufactures. It is one 

 of those great and valuable inventions which commence a new era in the 

 progress of improvement, and whose beneficial influence is felt in all 

 coming time. ' 



Besides difficulties common to all inventions, the machine could 

 be tested but for two or three weeks in each year. When a defect 

 was discovered, befi)re the remedv was applied to the instrument 

 the harvest was over, and the new form had to wait a whole year 

 for its trial, when some fresh failure required a fresh year's post- 

 ponement of final success. It seems right to put on record Mr. 



2 R 2 



