132 Agricillhire and the House of Russell. 
falling into a sack and the straw into a waggon. A double 
harrow, "to harrow two lands at the same time," was brought 
from Nottinghamshire ; and Mr. Salmon, the Duke's surveyor, 
produced a drilling-machine, drawn by one horse, to drill seven 
rows of any kind of seed, and so contrived that, " if the horse 
went crooked, the man guiding the machine could keep it 
straight ; and, on the contrary, if the horse went straight, the 
machine could be made to go crooked if required." 
No account of these historic gatherings would be complete 
Avitliout a reference to the mechanical genius of ]\Ir. Salmon, 
whose very name is probably quite unfamiliar to most readers 
of the Journal, but whose services in the improvement of agri- 
cultui"al implements were of remarkable, and in his day of unique, 
importance. Robert Salmon was for 30 years, from 1790 to 1821 , 
surveyor to the Dukes of Bedford, and his inventions wei'e one of 
tlie staple at tractions of the annual sheep-sliearingsat Woburn. In 
1797, the Society of Arts awarded him thirty guineas for a chaff- 
cutting engine, which was the parent of all the modern chaff- 
cutters. At the sheep-shearing of 1801, Mr. Salmon exhibited 
his " Bedfordshire Drill," which became the model of all succeed- 
ing drills. In 1803 he showed a plough wherein the slade was re- 
])laced Ity a skew wheel, as in Pirie's modern double-furrow 
plough. In ISOl he brought out an excellent " scuffler," or 
cultivator. Two years later, in 180G, he exhibited a self-raking 
reaping machine, but neither this implement nor a threshing 
machine shown with it attracted any public notice at the time. 
In 1808, however, Salmon's reaper was described in Bed's 
Weeldtj Messeiir/er, and it is a remarkable fact that this early 
machine embodied all the principles of the modern self-raker, 
which was not introduced until nearly sixty years later.* In 
181 1 Salmon patented the first hay-making machine, to which 
modei-n improvement has added nothing but new details. He 
received, at various tiuu's, silver medals iVom the Society of Arts 
for surgical instruments, a canal lock, a])iiaratus for pruning 
trees, a man-trap, and earth walls ; but, ])erhaps, liis most im- 
portant work was the designing of the Duke of Bcnlford's Home 
Farm and estate buildings, at Woburn, all of whicli were models 
ill llieii- way. This great, obscure nuTlianician, died at Woburn 
in 1821, aged 09 — The Qenilemnn's Mcujazme, in recording his 
decease, speaking of him as " well-known and respected by the 
admirers of tlie fine arts and sciences, the inventor of many 
useful and valuable inventions in snrgeiy, agriculture, and 
liydraulics." 
To tlie gi'icf of liis many friends and of the agricultural 
world generally, Duke Francis died on Marcli 2, 1802, at tlie 
