Steam Poivcr and Tlirashing Machines. 
1G5 
number of hands arc employed with a portable machine, there is 
also a temptation to keep on thrashing;, although it be not quite 
fine, or it actually stopped, to resume work quickly again, when 
wet runs about the stack and has damped the thrashing-machine. 
He who hires a machine is never certain when he may get it to 
a day, or sometimes to a week. It may happen that the very 
day the machine is set down to work, it begins to rain : the 
machine and hands to work it have come, and if there is any 
chance of getting on at all, it is the ordinary course to begin. 
Any one who has a fixed machine may generally choose a pro- 
mising d<ay for taking in, so as to incur much less liability to 
interruption than when thrashing for days together with a hired 
machine. 
The natural place for straw is the yard. When a fixture is 
used, the corn in the straw, together with all the chaff and cavings 
in one bulk, is brought to the barn in fewer loads than the straw 
alone, after being thrashed, would make : moreover, two loads of 
sheaves may be loaded in the same time as one load of loose 
straw. When the straw is got into the barn adjoining the yards, 
it is readily carried about by a fork, and that regularly as wanted. 
When carts are used for conveying the straw, it is very frequently 
thrown down too thick, and at too long intervals. With a fixed 
machine, the chaff and cavings are deposited in their proper 
places, without either a waste of material or labour at all equiva- 
lent to that incurred by thrashing in the open air. The fodder 
for cattle is much more safe from wet and more handy in the 
barn than out of doors. Even though cattle-men be very careful, 
still wet must penetrate the stack at times when a cut is made, 
and damage to the straw must ensue, in addition to waste of 
labour and a litter in the stackyard. I cannot find that a fixed 
engine and a fixed thrashing-machine have any drawbacks com- 
parable to those attendant on moveable machines. At first sight 
thrashing in the field appears to be a quick process, which saves 
the trouble of moving the unthrashed corn ; but before all is done, 
more labour has been incurred. I once thrashed out 20 acres of 
barley in the field, and left the straw, chaff, and cavings, according 
to the usual course, to be brought home at leisure. Having no 
waggons, a man with a horse and cart was employed nearly all 
winter for days together to clear up ; but, after all, he only made 
as it were a small hole in a large mountain, which required for 
its removal a great many carts for several days. The odd man 
in winter went more times for about perhaps 2 cwt. of chaff at a 
load, than would have been sufficient to have brought in the whole 
of the unthrashed corn. 
The past two winters I have only required a man for a few days 
altogether to clear up the refuse thatch in the stackvard. When 
taking in and thrashing, I now require for a regular full day's 
