610 Report on the Trials of Combined Stacking-Machines 
working as would enable ordinary farm labourers to work tlie 
machine successfully. Some machines require many bolts and 
nuts to be adjusted by hand ; in ordinary practice these nuts, as 
well as much valuable time, would probably be lost. 
As soon as the machine was adjusted for work, a small 
waggon-load of loose straw was drawn up and unloaded into the 
hopper of the elevator by two men ; an empty waggon was 
placed on the farther side of the rick-cloth to receive the straw 
as it came over, this waggon when full was drawn round to 
supply the same straw again (with the addition of a small pitch 
to make up for waste) to the next machine tried. When one- 
half of the load had been carried over, the trough was raised to 
deliver 20 feet high, and when another quarter had gone the ex- 
hibitor was told to raise the trough to the extreme height at 
which he thought it could do its work with thorough efficiency. 
When the straw was all delivered the time occupied was 
noted, and a similar load of hay was brought up to be delivered 
at the same extreme elevation. Although the time occupied in 
each of the first three runs is noted in columns 18, 19, and 20, 
no points were awarded for rapidity of work, for most of the 
machines delivered the material as fast as it was supplied, and 
the supply was not quite at one pace ; for convenience the same 
two men worked alternately at loading and unloading the same 
waggon, and before long one pair of men showed themselves 
quicker workers than the other two. In the trials with hay and 
straw most of the machines did their work fairly, and only one 
(No. 4952) broke down, owing to the bad construction of its 
horse-gear. The chief difference in these trials was in the com- 
' pleteness of the delivery and absence of choking of chains and 
forks ; with some machines the straw and hay rolled back 
towards the hopper, and in others it hung upon the chains and 
teeth of the travelling ladder, so that much was dropped on the 
wrong side of the rick-cloth. The first fault, that of rolling, 
generally showed itself most in the lower half of the trough, and 
as it occurred chiefly in machines with short teeth and with the 
rake-heads set rather far apart, we at first attributed it solely 
to these causes ; this explanation, however, did not seem satis- 
factory when we found Holmes (No. 4392) making a perfect 
delivery with teeth only 4 inches long. A further examination 
proved that this tendency to roll the straw in a great measure 
depended upon the position of the back of tlie hopper. 
Tlie back of the hopper should be made to point toward the 
spindle of the drum, as shown in Fig. 2, p. Gil ; the straw 
would then fall at once upon the rakes of the ladder, and be 
borne away in a straight line without twisting. When tlie back 
of the hopper is made to terminate behind the spindle, as in the 
