The Evohition of Agricultural Implements. C7 
band, leaving the sheaf free to be thrown off the machine by a 
pair of arms provided for that purpose. 
It is not unlikely that binders will in future be greatly 
simplified by dispensing with the vertical apron. Adriance, 
Platt, & Co., of Poughkeepsie, New York, showed at the Doncas- 
ter Meeting, 1891, a reaper in which, by means of a roller fitted 
with gathering arms, the corn is taken directly from off the 
platform apron, and passed into the sheafing apparatus. This 
machine is lighter in draught, and simpler than the double 
apron binder, while it did good work in heavy laid crops, and 
looked altogether like a promising new departure in harvesting 
machinery. 
Manual delivery reapers were largely used both before and 
during the introduction of the sheafer and binder, and still, 
indeed, find a considei’able field of usefulness. In the early days, 
manual side-delivery of the sheaf was often attempted, and 
sometimes accomplished, by strong and skilful men working in 
average crops. But the work was too severe for ordinary 
labourers, and "back-delivery” soon became the rule in all 
manual machines. Tipping and slatted grain platforms make 
this form of delivery light work, and when men enough can be 
found to bind the grain and remove it from the track of the 
machine as fast as cut the plan is a good one. 
Moxving-machines have practically the same history as 
the reaping-machine, but the problems to be solved differ in 
some important points in the two impalements. The cutting of 
straw by means of reciprocating knives is easy ; but grass, and 
especially meadow grass, is much more difficult to deal with. 
Cutting ap^paratus that will keep) p)erfectly clean in the one case 
becomes hopelessly clogged in the other, and it was long before 
a knife and finger were found cap)able of mowing in foul 
meadow bottoms without choking. 
Hussey’s " guard,” or finger — a modification of Common’s 
open guard — introduced in 1852, was the most important step 
ever taken towards the accomp)lishment of machine-mowing, 
and it was only by working on this American inventor’s lines 
that the p)roblem was ultimately solved. 
Flexibility of the cutting app)aratus is another requirement 
of the mowing-machine not shared by the reaper, a require- 
ment which has resulted in giving to the mower an independent 
gear frame, supp)orted on two driving wheels, from which frame 
the cutter bar hangs in such a manner as to follow freely all the 
superficial inequalities of the ground. 
Although the development of the reaper and mower have 
progressed together, it is interesting to notice that the former. 
