670 Report on the Trials of Implements at Reading. 
possible to get the hay dry enough for putting it in cock. On 
Thursday there were very heavy showers ; and nothing could 
be done. On Friday, after some showers, the afternoon was 
bright, and a brisk south-west wind was blowing, and in the 
evening the foundation of Coultas's stack was begun. On Satur- 
day, the 8th, this stack was nearly completed, and a trial of 
Gibbs's Hay Dryer was accomplished. 
Plot 2. — Mr. Champion, Exhibitor. 
Trial of Gibbs's Hay Dryer, July 8. 
As has been stated before, this plot of about 5 acres, with 
a heavy crop of coarse woolly grass, had been mown on the 
afternoon of the 3rd and the morning of the 4th. The hay 
had been several times tedded, and having been much exposed, 
it had lost a good deal of the sap ; but it was by no means 
dry. The early morning (8th) was fair, and the hay having 
been wind-rowed, it was carried by a hay-sweep and sledges 
close up to the drying apparatus, where it was rounded up into 
fourteen big hay-cocks. This was accomplished in about 
2^ hours. The dryer began work at 9.10 A.M., and finished 
at 3.56 P.M., two short stoppages having been made. The time 
occupied was thus 6 hours 46 minutes, including stoppages. 
The stack staddle (Fig. 8, a), 21 feet square, was laid out a 
short distance to the rear of the dryer (b). In the ground 
was placed a wooden box-flue, constructed to carry an exhaust 
fan (as described p. 655) ; over the inner end of this flue a shaft 
was carried up by means of a wooden cage 18 inches square 
and 6 feet high. 
The table of the dryer had a fall of about 8 inches in 27 feet 
length. At right angles to the dryer were placed the furnace 
and blast fan (c), and in connection with them an 8-horse-power 
engine (d). 
At the the time of starting, the heat of the air-blast, a* 
shown by a pyrometer in the trunk which connects C and B, 
was 400° F., and during the working it varied from 400° to 
475°. In addition to the men employed in bringing the hay 
to the apparatus and pitching it up to the stack, 8 men 
were employed as follows : — 1 engine-driver, 1 stoker in charge 
of the furnace, 2 men feeding the machine, 2 removing the 
hay from the machine, and 2 superintending the work. Of 
the last-named, one might be dispensed with. The hay being 
fed into the machine on each side of the central hot-air trough, 
is carried forward partly by the action of the forks, partly by 
that of the table, and partly by the action of the hot-air which 
takes a diagonal direction towards the delivery end of the 
