Steam  Threshing-machines. 
399 
which  the  engine  itself  may  travel.  A small  farm,  again,  cannot 
keep  a fixed  engine  in  work.  It  is  most  convenient  when  acorn- 
rick  is  to  be  threshed  in  a hurry,  or  a straw-rick  to  be  cut  up  for 
sheep,  that  steam-power  should  be  at  your  command,  to  be  had 
for  the  hiring.  Accordingly,  fifty  moveable  steam-engines  at  the 
price  of  200/.  each  were  sold  in  the  following  year  by  one  exhi- 
bitor at  our  Norwich  show.  Their  improvement  is  manifested 
by  the  single  fact  that  our  prize  engine  at  Exeter  consumes  but 
one  ton  of  coals,  in  the  time  during  which  a prize  engine  of 
former  years  requires  four. 
But,  apart  from  steam-power,  there  is  a surprising  difference 
in  the  amount  of  work  done  by  common  threshing-machines 
worked  by  four  horses.  It  would  be  unfair,  of  course,  to  com- 
pare the  corn  threshed  in  a barn  with  the  result  of  the  race  at 
our  annual  trials.  But  I have  reason  to  believe  that  the  ordinary 
work  of  the  best  machines  in  the  barn,  striking  an  average  of  the 
yield  from  the  straw,  which  varies,  of  course,  at  different  harvests, 
is  from  30  to  40  quarters  of  wheat  per  day  of  eight  hours;  yet  I 
never  could  find  from  any  farmer  in  my  own  neighbourhood  that 
he  could  get  from  our  common  threshing-machine  more  than  10  to 
15  quarters  in  the  same  time.  I have  seen  it  stated,  too,  that  in 
Middlesex  one  of  Messrs.  Garrett’s  threshing-machines  was 
found  to  double  the  work  of  the  common  machines  of  that  county. 
Clearly  farmers  should  look  at  once  into  this  monstrous  dif- 
ference of  their  machinery — a difference  which  could  not  exist 
two  years  at  Manchester.  The  threshing-machine,  too,  is  now 
made  to  do  more  than  thresh : it  separates  the  straw,  and, 
further,  winnows  the  corn  so  far  that  a single  dressing  is  after- 
wards sufficient  to  fit  it  for  market.  All  this,  Mr.  Garrett  informs 
me,  may  be  done  with  his  steam-driven  threshing-machine  at 
1 s.  to  1j.  3d.  per  quarter  ; by  hand  it  would  cost  certainly  from  3s. 
to  4s.,  so  that  here  we  have  a saving  of  2s.  per  quarter,  7s.  on  every 
acre  of  wheat.  The  quality  of  the  threshing  itself  is  greatly  im- 
proved. To  this  day  in  some,  perhaps  most,  districts,  maltsters 
will  not  buy  machine-threshed  barley,  because  so  many  grains 
are  bruised  by  our  old  machines,  and  their  germinating  prin- 
ciple destroyed.  Farmers  generally  ought  to  know  that  this 
objection  has  been  entirely  overcome  within  the  last  few  years, 
and  that  in  Essex,  as  I am  told — no  mean  district  for  malt — the 
maltsters  are  even  beginning  to  buy  machine- dressed  barley  by  pre- 
ference. In  liand-threshing  barley  there  is  not  only  great  delay  in 
preparing  any  quantity  for  the  market,  but  there  arises  a serious 
obstacle  for  one  of  our  great  modern  improvements — the  cutting 
up  the  barley-straw  into  fodder  for  sheep,  into  chaff,  as  it  is 
called.  The  thresher,  of  course,  gets  through  but  a small  quan- 
tity of  barley  in  a day’s  work,  and  the  straw  is  heaped  up 
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