HARVESTING MACHINERY.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2446, 7 February 1882, Page 4

HARVESTING MACHINERY.

Farmers who reviait the Old Country after an abaenoe of from twenty to thirty years must see a wonderful change in the manner of reaping and in gathering the crops. Where all the reaping was done with hand reaphooks or sickles he would now gee the corn neatly and expeditiously cut and bound in one operation faater than ten or a dozen men could perform the work by hand. Of course the reap-hook was first supplanted by the reaping machine, but not without boing strenuously resisted by the laboring classes, who, in their ignoranoe, fancied that they would be quite deprived of the means of earning a little higher wages at harvest time if the use of reaping machines became general. The opposition to reaping machines boing overcome in the course of time, there was no difficulty in introducing the still more laborsaving binding machines. Apropot of these ■we give an extract from a Canterbury journal printed some seven years since:—Our leaping and threshing machines are almost perfeot, but the next great desideratum—an efficient binding machine—has yet to bo supplied. When we considor what a number of delicate operations machinery has been mado to perform, it seems rather extraordinary that no machine has been constructed to perform the comparatively rough work of binding. There is a certain fortune awaiting the man who invents such a machine, and apart from the wealth he would gain from the sale of his machines, he would undoubtedly be considered by farmers the greatest benefactor of mankind.' The farmers' highest hopes have been realised, and yet they have a great deal to complain of this season. But it is well known that farmers are the greatest grumblers in existence, and their occupation is such that it requires a great many favorable circumstances to combine together to make a farmer easy and contented in his mind. For the colonies, whore such large areas are cultivated, it is imperatively necessary that all the available strength should be applied in the most judioious manner. Machinery should be employed wherever it is possible to do so. It was a saying of Meohi's, the well-known agriculturist—'Never employ a man where a machine can be used.' If this is true in England, with a teeming population, how much more forcibly must it apply to the circumstances of a colony ? The ignorant prejudice against machinery which obstructed the introduction of reaping and threshing machines seems to have died out. Experience has shown that machinery does not dispense with human labor, but calls for it in a different shape and to an increased extent. It is now recognised that the more that machinery is used the less will the work done by men be like that of the beast of burden. We are now inclined to pride ourselves upon the advanced aetata to which machinery has been brought in •companion to the rude contrivance* of our

forefathers. Bnfc perhaps, aftsr the lapse ot another hundred year*, the maohinery of the present day will be considered very clumsy and useless, though there may be men found to stick to it, in spite of the improvements that may be invented, just because their fathers did so. Bren at the present time there are to be found in the south of England men who are using implements and maohines which a colonial farmer would consider only fit to atop a gap in the fence. The writer of this reoeived by the last mail a letter from a friend who is on a visit to England, in whioh he says—'Only a few miles from London I saw a man holding a wooden plough of the most antiquated sort, whioh was drawn by three great horses in a line, and driven by a big lump of a boy who would be considered old enough to take charge of a double plough and four horses in the colonies. I also saw three men and a boy working an ordinary corn drill, and a farm waggon never goes off the farm without having two men with it, one to take charge of the load and the other the horses. A ploughman here in the south of England gets about 15s a week without board, but he must have a boy to help him with a siDgle plough, and is not expected to plough more than three, fourths of an acre a day, so that labor is much oheaper in Otago, where a man will plough three acres a day for 25s a week and found.' The stage to whioh mechanical invention has arrived in any country should be a fair test of its general advancement, and of the oomfort and prosperity of its inhabitants. It is impossible for any country to hold is own in the great march of nations if it will persist in adhering to old-fashioned means of performing work. There are few occupations in whioh there is more heavy manual labor required than in agriculture. The cultivation of grain entails incessant labor all the year round, and therefore affords great Boope for the employment of mechanioal aid. Without the reaping maohine and steam threshing maohines agriculture oould not be carried on in this provinoe, except on a very limited scale. It is the interest of all those engaged in agricultural pursuits to obtain the most complete information possible—information as to the implements and maohinery in use in all the most advanced countries. At present we buy whatever the merchants import, and as there is but little direct trade with any country but Great Britain, the greater part of the implements and maohinery used here are of English manufacture. There is probably no country where maohinery is so much employed as in Groat Britain, but the question is—whether that maohinery is the most suitable for our requirements. We are indebted to the Yankees for the binding apparatus, and probably we could benefit by a few more 'Yankee notions ' being introduoed. The large exhibitions whioh have recently been held in different Australian colonies will no doubt do immense good in bringing all the best maohinery of the civilised world together under one roof, where it may be viewed at leisure by any one who would take the trouble to go and see it. It is quite possible, however, for a farmer to get too much maohinery and implements around him if he buys the latest improvements in everything. Unless he can make profitable use of it, it will be so muoh dead stock on his hands, and the money oould have been muoh more judiciously laid out in manure or otherwise. It is very seldom that practical farmers are guilty of this mania for maohinery. Fanoy farmers and retired tradesmen sometimes endeavor to make up for their want of practical knowledge by surrounding themselves by expensive and unnecessary maohinery—"Witness."