64 
The Evolution of Agricultural Implements. 
In the course of his experiments, Common had recourse to 
the Browns, father and son, of Alnwick, clever mechanics and 
founders, who substituted iron for wood in many parts of his 
machines, and themselves became, later, makers of an improved 
machine which was sold in some numbers about 1822. In 1824 
the Browns left Alnwick, and shortly afterwards emigrated to 
Canada, taking with them models of Common’s reaping-machines. 
Ultimately, they removed to Sterling, in Cayuga County, New 
York State, where the father became a farmer, and so died in 
1850. McCormick, the reputed originator of the reaping-machine, 
lived at Aubmm, about twenty miles from Sterling, and knew the 
Browns well. From them he obtained a model and description 
of Common’s machine, and there is little doubt that the reaper 
with which he competed at the trials of Harvesters, held at 
Auburn by the New York State Agricultural Society in 184G, 
was the child of those models and the father of the McCormick 
machine which obtained such notoriety at the London Inter- 
national Exhibition of 1851. 
The development of the Gallic Stripper, ai’rested by Common’s 
invention in England, was continued with considerable success 
in America. Its chief defect, that of requiring a rake-man 
to keep the rippling comb clean, was obviated by Ashmore and 
Beck, who, in 1835, introduced what is now known as the 
“reel.” In 1836, Carpenter, of New York, adapted the reel to 
the threshing of the ears after they had been snatched from the 
straw; while in 1844, Easterly, of Heart-prairie, Wisconsin, 
introduced an improved “ header ” (as this class of machine 
was now called in the United States), capable of cutting twenty- 
five acres of wheat per day. This machine, which, on its 
appearance, the highest agricultural authorities in America 
regarded as of “ great promise,” soon made itself very popular 
in the large grain-growing farms of the Far West, where, indeed, 
it held its own until the introduction of the sheaf-binding reaper 
in recent days. 
F’ifteen years after Common’s first experiments, or in 1826, 
the Rev. Patrick Bell brought out the well-known machine, still 
bearing his name, with an endless apron which received the cut 
grain and discharged it in swathe at the side of the horse track. 
For more than thirty years this method of delivery remained 
without improvement, and a great number of machines, made 
either on Bell’s plan or that of Burgess, in which travelling 
aprons were replaced by endless screws, were successfully used in 
this country. 
In 1851, however, Seymour, of Brockport, U.S.A., intro- 
duced a reaper in which the graifi was discharged in sheaves 
