132 Beport on Implements at Liverpool, and on 
distinct as the taking of a lucifer match out of his pocket and 
throwing it amongst the straw would be. 
Fig, 7. — SJcetch of W. A. Wood's Wire-hand Cutting Nippers.* 
The following description appeared in the ' Farmer ' of March 
11th :— 
" The straight blade which enters in below the band is double, and on the 
inner half there is a projection. On the outer side of the curved blade there 
is a corresponding projection. These two projections lay hold of one end of 
the cut wire, whilst the other is set free and drawn from under the sheaf upon 
the feeding bench of the threshing-machine. Now, the wire should be cut 
close to the twist, and the twist end pulled out, as this is the easiest way of 
doing the work. The instrument is hung from the neck of the operator by a 
strap, so that the moment he cuts the band and pulls it out, he, with the help 
of a spiral spring, opens the blades, when the wire band may be withdrawn 
and placed in a box under the feeding bench, and when the threshing is over 
the whole may be bundled away, not a single inch being left in the straw." 
A remarkable evidence of the universality of the feeling, be it 
prejudice or not, against the use of wire for sheaf-binding is 
shown by the fact that in every one of the English inventions 
entered at the Liverpool Show a distinctive feature was stated to 
be the employment of some vegetable fibre as a binding mate- 
rial instead of wire, and in the Royal Agricultural Society's trials 
next year no doubt it will be made a great point of by our native 
* In a letter dated March 4th, Mr. Scotson gives me the following account of 
his experience of the use of this contrivance for cutting: and holding the wire 
band : — " Last week I threshed the white oats, which were cut by the three Self- 
Binding Iteapers, tried by the Eoynl Agricultural Society in my lii Ids iH August 
last. We had one of W. A. Wood's Wire Band-cutting Nippers. If we liad 
two instead of one there would have pr;ictically been no difficulty in the two 
people on the threshing-box supplying the sheaves as fast as the Clayton and 
Shuttlcworth 8-horsc machine could thresh the corn. The sheaves need to bo 
cut where the twisted wire fastens, so that the sheaf is loose at once from the 
wire band, which we dropped into a ba-ket. If the wire baud is not cut where 
the twisted fastening is, tlie twisted portion of the band brings some straws from 
the loose sheaf witli it - which is objectionable; but, as I have indic;itcd. with 
two pairs of nippers the two persons on the machine-box would have time to tnrn 
the sheaf to find the part of wire band where the twisted fastening is on the 
slieaf. When tlie sheaves were all threshed, we sent the wire bands, with what 
little unthrcshed corn attached to them, altogether through the threshing- 
machine, and would not liave weighed 80 Ib.i. weight, wire, straw and all which 
we burnt, so tliat practically I see little ditliculty in the corn being tied with 
wire." — Ed. 
