54 Recent Improvements in Haymaking. 
their use. I have often seen a haymaker going', with the hay in 
much too forward a state, doing it mischief. Care also should 
be taken in the setting of the horse-rake, that, while doing its 
work thoroughly, it does not pull up dirt, moss, roots, iScc." 
We now come to the latest though certainly not the least 
important of the improvements recently introduced among the 
implements used in haymaking. To say that all mowing- 
machines have answered wherever they have been tried would 
not be in accordance with facts. But where there has been failure 
with the use of a good machine, that failure has generally resulted 
more from bad or inefficient management than from anything 
else. Some persons have forgotten that the mower is not like a 
plough or a waggon, which might be entrusted into hands of 
second-rate efficiency. On visiting a " model larm " last year, 
at the close ol' harvest, we were rather surprised to see one of 
Burgess and Key's latest and most improved implements lying 
rusting outside, under the comfortless drip of an adjoining shed. 
" It would not answer here ; we tried it for a couple of days," 
was the remark. One thing is certain, that if this specimen of 
the care taken for its preservation were also a fair indication of 
the trial it received, any disappointment or failure might be 
readily accounted for. At all events, with one of the very same 
make, we cut heavier crops, at the rate of an acre per hour, under 
circumstances much more difficult to deal with. Our mode of 
procedure was this : From among the best of the young fellows 
in the stable, that one who had the most of a mechanical turn 
was selected as driver. He had a youth in attendance, for throw- 
ing off any of the swathe that might be in the way at the turn- 
ings, and also for sharpening the spare-knife, that no delay 
might occur. In heavy crops, or when the ground was damp, a 
third horse was added in front ; and the horses were changed 
about every three hours. This allowed two sets of horses to get 
through a fair amount of work, before carrying could possibly 
commence ; so that no opportunity of carting a load was ever 
missed, through attention to the mower. In a good long day we 
could cut, and have cut, with the mower and six scythes together, 
eighteen acres of what is reckoned a full crop, on the banks of 
the Avon. The driver had a bonus of one pound for each of the 
past two years ; and he left the machine in creditable order at 
the close of the season. On t^Vo occasions we had to telegraph 
to Newgate Street for the du})licate of a working part which had 
sustained injury ; and the wanting portion was at our local station 
in six hours after date. But for a considerable amount of park- 
timber, and several awkwardly shaped meadows with open 
trenches, the number of men engaged in hand-mowing might 
