Award of Medals, Sfc, at Kilburn. 
7b7 
suitability for their special work, the great advance which has 
been made in a period of less than twenty-five years. 
Messrs. J. and F. Howard exhibited a windlass for working 
Smith's cultivator with a portable engine, made in 1860 for 
the Royal Farm, Windsor. Also a three-tine cultivator with 
Smith's patent turning-bow, made for the same purpose in 1859. 
Another of Smith's cultivators, made by Messrs. Howard in 
1856, was lent by Mr. Whiting. By the use of the bow, to which 
the ends of the two ropes were attached, the implement was 
readily turned by the pull of the hind rope ; but as there was no 
arrangement for lifting the tines out of the ground, an implement 
of great width was out of the question ; nevertheless great credit 
is due to Mr. Smith for an invention which paved the way for 
the turning cultivator of Messrs. Fowler and Co., probably the 
most perfect implement for steam purposes yet invented. 
It would have been deeply interesting and instructive to have 
seen more of the original designs for reaping by machinery ; and 
in the absence of models, the diagram illustrating the various 
designs that have been the subject of experiments was well 
worthy of attention. 
Bell's original reaper, which worked at the Glasgow Show 
in 1829 and received a prize, together with one of Hussey's 
reapers with tilting platform as shown in 1853, were exhibited 
by the Commissioners of Patents. It would have been very 
interesting to have had McCormick's machine, which was first 
introduced to the British public at the Great Exhibition of 1851. 
In the notice attached to Bell's reaper in the Catalogue, it is 
stated that a number of these machines were sent to America in 
1834, strong evidence that to our countryman belongs the great 
honour of having been the original inventor of machinery which 
both here and in America are now such an absolute necessity. 
It is further stated that a rotary cutting machine, by Smith of 
Deanstone, invented about the same time, in 1834, is still used 
by Mr. jNIcQueen, near Stirling. It is much to be regretted that 
if this is so, the curiosity was not shown at Kilburn, because it 
represents a number of inventions on the same plan. Sir P. 
Miles, of Leigh Court, Bristol, showed a Burgess and Key's 
swathe delivery reaper of 1854, the identical machine which first 
beat Bell's, manufactured by Crosskill, of Beverley, at the Bristol 
trials after the Carlisle Meeting. This machine was an improve- 
ment on McCormick's original machine, and was specially dis- 
tinguished by the means for self-swathe delivery by a series of 
rollers fitted with Archimedian screws. The Judges, Messrs. 
Huskinson and Clare Sewell Read, thus spoke of it in 1854 : — 
This machine cut a clear track of 5 feet 6 inches, and in every operation 
in which it was tested exhibited a decided superiority. It cut with great 
