140 
Report on Implements at Liverpool^ and on 
every member of the community the loss of life by accidents or 
the maiming of limbs has long been regarded as a national loss. 
Yet, strange to say, though safety-gearing has become a rule in 
the higher branches of mechanical construction used in arts and 
manufactures, it is only within five or six years that our 
mechanics have turned their attention to this point, and made 
efforts to accomplish the same object in the more powerful and 
complicated machinery now used in advanced and scientific 
agriculture. From what I saw at the Liverpool Meeting I shall 
be enabled to give before my Report is concluded, not only 
proof of the general interest manifested by engineers on this 
particular point, but to show abundant testimony of the results 
which they have attained already, and some of which will 
produce a most appreciable saving of human life. 
This machine does not, however, depend upon the important 
work which it proposes to accomplish, but is fully entitled to 
any honour that the Society can award it, not only as an effort 
in the right direction, but also as a successful remedy and 
prevention of a serious evil. A more thoroughly efficacious 
automatic safeguard to a very dangerous part of a most destruc- 
tive machine I have never before met with. Like all the most 
important inventions round which hundreds of adaptations have 
clustered, this discovery depends on one of the simplest mechan- 
ical principles known and employed by every workman. The 
whole thing is done by an automatic movement of two levers 
attached to a crank-rod at each end, and moving simultaneously 
whichever of the two levers chances to be pressed upon, in 
which case the mouth of the drum is securely closed. A 
noticeable feature in this invention is in the fact that a few 
inches of open space are left when the safety-guard is down. 
Through this aperture the loose corn accumulated on the stage, 
chaffings full of short heads, rakings, and other refuse in which 
there will be generally found an accumulation of gravel and 
small stones which are in ordinary machines frequently injurious 
to the workpeople, can be thrust by a rake into the concave of 
the drum. It is remarkable to observe that safety appliances 
judiciously applied to agricultural implements generally increase 
their efficiency and value. 
The following mechanical description will show how this 
Drum-guard operates in practice, and will be clearly understood 
at a glance by every one. Simplicity in construction and 
effectiveness in action, as all mechanics know, are really true 
cause and effect : — 
In proiUicing this puard two imjiortant points have been kept in view: 
1st. To icmdvc iill danger to the pereons engaged in feeding. 2nd. To place 
as much of the necessary mechanism as possible below the scaffold boards. 
