130 Report on Implements at Liverpool, and on 
and the tying mechanism in the same machine are not only 
original in conception and ingenious in device, but the most 
effective of the three competing implements. I see no more 
reason why it should not be constructed to gather and bind a 
4-quarters English wheat-crop than that it should cut one of 
3 quarters, which it really can do now in a workmanlike manner. 
Osborne's binder ties equally well, and his crane-neck motion is 
quite original ; thus while the tying is as good as possible, the 
movement of the sheaf off the delivery-platform is the difficulty 
now in force. INIcCormick's tying is equally perfect, and the 
result of perhaps the most ingenious combination of wheels, 
cams, and pinions ever put together in a machine to be worked 
on the rough land and under the guidance of a farmer's man. 
In the present trials the inventors lost nothing on this score, 
but I am afraid that agriculture can scarcely claim the credit of 
having produced any of those energetic, powerful, and clever 
men who conducted the several machines in these trials. I 
cannot, speaking from an observer's point of view, do justice to 
the manner in which this complicated machinery worked in 
practice, the sheafing and tying being as good as need be, and 
the failure being solely due to the contracted space in which 
the retiring sheaf had to move, and to the absence of a propelling 
power to start its motion. 
To each of the machines attaches the special merit of being 
able to cut a crop of corn, even now, if assisted by two extra men, 
of heavy bulk, in a shorter time than any ordinary reaping- 
machine, and in a better manner, — arising from the absolute 
absence of waste from scattered ears in the horse-track. This, 
of course, is a saving supplementary to that arising from the 
the binding and the sheafing of the grain. 
On three points, indeed, for the self-binding reaper, as even 
now presented in the field, the specific merit of this economy 
may be claimed, as well as the entire success of all the in- 
ventions in the sheafing and tying processes. The ipvention 
of the sewing-machine was deemed a marvellous instance of 
mechanical genius, but it is nothing to compare with the inven- 
tions which have just been tested. In the one case the material 
to be operated upon is fixed, and the thread is always in the 
same position ; whilst in the case of the self-binding reaper, the 
material consists of distinct kinds of corn, of every variety of 
bulk, to be operated upon under different circumstances of 
weather. These various kinds of com must be cut and conveyed 
to a table, and thence, by revolving wheels, elevated 5 feet high, 
and passed into the jaws of an iron piece of mechanism of the 
most outre form, which grasps it, while elbows, fingers, knuckles, 
and thumbs manipulate it so that, without a sensil)le delay, it 
passes off the machine to the ground, and is found to be a perfect 
