586 
Report on the Trials of 
Trials of Glass 3 in Hay and Straw. 
Article No. 558, exhibited by Valentine J. Allen, Spalding, 
Lincolnshire, was the first implement to come to trial in Class 3 
on July 3. After making one bale, this machine became dis- 
abled by the slipping of a pinion over two teeth of the rack in 
which it engaged, whereby the second motion shaft of the machine 
became bent and the joress itself put out of the competition. 
Article No. 524, exhibited by Henry Buck, of Castle Hill, 
Down Ampney, Wiltshire, was a homely tool rather than machine, 
consisting of a very simple apparatus wherein manual labour is 
applied directly to the compression of the bale. Hay or straw 
is laid horizontally between four wooden uprights, opposed to 
each other, and firmly fastened to a wooden base plate. Along 
the latter lie two chains, either of whose outer extremities are 
connected by a cross-piece of wood. When the retainer is full, 
the chains are thrown around its contents, like strings around a 
parcel, their wooden terminations forming treadles, upon each 
of which one of the two attendants stands. These men are 
furnished each with a wooden maul, wielding which with their 
right, while clasping each other's left hands, they stamp upon the 
crossing of the chains, their own weight, meanwhile, serving to 
take up and retain all the slack chain which they can thus succeed 
in producing. When the compression is complete, the bale is 
tied with two cords, and makes way for another supply of loose 
material. 
Ruck's Press, which can hardly be called a machine, suc- 
ceeded in throwing out a bale every five minutes, but it pro- 
duced an almost inappreciable compression, whether in straw 
or hay, only 1"7 lb. of the former and 5'5 lbs. of the latter 
material being pressed into a cubic foot. Two men were em- 
ployed about the press; the bales were rough and shapeless, the 
power absorbed, in relation to the work done, considerable, and 
the cost of baling, in relation to output and density, high. The 
machine was not ordered for second trial. 
Article No. 3099, exhibited by Thomas Machenzie & Sons, 
of 212 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, is of American origin, 
and consists of a vertical box having two lateral doors at the 
bottom of the press-body. 
The body is filled from tlie top with loose materials. These, after being 
trampled, are covered with a platten, and this again with a cross beam, 
whose extremities project tlirougli slots in the ends of the box. Two long 
wooden levers act, one on each end of this beam, shifting fulcra being pro- 
vided for them by the teeth of a pair of racks which line 1 he sides of either 
slot. The platten thus descends step by step, what is gained at each stroke 
of the lever being secured by palls attached to the cross-beam, and falling 
