Hai/ and Strav; Presses at Kottingltam. 
599 
cerned, it was a case in which a decision would hardly have 
been possible without the aid of " points," and these, after 
a most careful allotment, gave the First Prize to Bamber. So 
few points, however, divided the first from the second machine 
that the Judges recommended Messrs. Barford & Perkins for 
a second prize — there being only one prize of 20L offered in this 
class — and, upon the Council announcing their inability to make 
any change in the published programme, the Judges highly 
commended Barford & Perkins's Press, cou25ling this award 
with the statement that it was made because no further money 
prize could be awarded by the Council. The efiect, however, 
was to put the press in question closely into the second place. 
Gexeral Coxclusioxs. 
It now only remains briefly to deduce certain general con- 
clusions from these trials, and to notice some extraordinary 
discrepancies in the practice of the various makers — discre- 
pancies which, while they tend to show that the art of press- 
making is in its infancy, prove also that, whatever may be 
thought of the prize system generally, its application to 
machines still in course of development benefits both users and 
makers. There is no way, indeed, short of the slow process 
known as the " sun'ival of the fittest,"' whereby any mechanical 
device is ultimately perfected, bat the advantage of such trials as 
those at Nottingham resides in the fact that artificial selection 
aids natural selection, and brings the " fittest " sooner into being. 
So far as Class 1 is concerned, it has already been pointed 
out that both the Ladd and Pilter Presses are wasteful of power, 
and the cause of this wastefulness has been explained. The 
uneven character of the load imposed upon the engine by the 
Foster Press has been dwelt upon, together with the fact 
that this machine calls for a more powerful engine than would 
be needed if its demands for energy in relation to the work 
accomplished were more constant. On the other hand, the 
Howard Press, with all its crudities, did not throw away power, 
like the Ladd and Pilter Presses, on the extrasion of the trusses, 
for, if it thrust its hay or straw sausage forth intermittently, 
little or no loss of power was thereby occasioned, because the 
inertia of the issuing stream was trifling. This intermittence 
itself would probably disappear by the adoption of an automatic 
binding apparatus, with the addition of which apparently feasible 
improvement the Howard Press has a future before it. 
In the 2nd, or Horse-power Class, Ladd's weak point 
came into strong relief when his press was brought into compe- 
tition with that of Stephenson. A great part of his horse-power 
