and Miscellaneous Implements at Bristol. 
79 
the platform-wheel being similarly altered by hand. The reel 
is now adjustable as to height, which was not the case formerly. 
The pitch of the fingers and the height of the cutter-bar can be 
altered from 2 to 9^ in., by a leverage on a pole actuated from 
the driver's seat ; any greater alteration is by the chain and rack 
described above. In the old machine the method of raising 
was by turning the sleeve with a lever, and holding the pinion 
in the rack by means of pins. The driving-wheel, 42 in. by 7, 
has now a flange on the outside -/^ square, to hold the wheel in 
wet or sidling ground. Inside the wheel is a wooden rim 
screwed to the wheel, to keep dirt out of the gearing. 
Fig. 1. — Showing the Needle of Wood's Shea f-Binder enteiing the Grain. 
The binder-head a is carried by a bent arm, h, centered upon a shaft, c, and 
is rotated by bevel gearing, d, and a shaft, e, which is oj^erated by the gearing/ 
from the main beaving-whcel of the machine. 'J'lie head a, in descending, 
passes witliin a slot ibrmed by a division of the board g, on which the straws 
gather from tlie elevator, and the pinion h (Fig. 5, p. 81) in the head gears into 
the teeth of a rack fitted in the side of the slot to turn the pinion, and thus 
cause the two portions of the wire to twist. The wire having been previously 
led between the teeth of the pinion by the angle, one portion of the thread takes 
by the movement of the head, and the other by slipping into the recess i of 
the head as the head passes the binding jwint for the purjTose of making the loop 
or band in which the cut straws are bound into a sheaf, this taking place at the 
